Meet my guest blogger: Missy Radune

I have had the opportunity to meet people who I admire. Working in health care allowed me to meet Missy. I have read many of her Facebook posts and have felt uplifted and motivated by her words. I am not a selfish guy. I am sharing her words with you. 

First, I would like to thank John for asking me to contribute to his blog. It means a lot to me that he believes that I may be able to say something that may help someone. I will start by introducing myself. I am Missy Radune. I am a nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Chillicothe, Ohio. I met John while he was working in a Veterans Community Based Outpatient Clinic. I am honored to call him a friend.  I have been married for 15 years to the most amazing man ever. We have three children. Connor, a seventh grader, Baleigh, a fourth grader, and our miracle son Cooper who is 4.  I have had many struggles in life but know that with God anything is possible.

I grew up in a small Christian Holiness Church in Kentucky, no, no snake handling. One thing that I learned growing up was the power and God in any situation, IF you give it all to God.

As I grew up, I would see many people’s lives changing. I would see parents praying for their children. I would hear children praying for their parents. I would see the love of a parent and a child; a love like no other.

I began to realize when I married and started having a family the sacrifice that God gave to us, by allowing his son to die for our sins. I could not imagine allowing one of my three children to be sacrificed so that others would be saved. But God loved us that much. God loved me even before he knew me, just like my parents loved me before they ever held me. Just like I had love for my three children the minute I knew God had blessed me with them.

Imagine what it must have been like for God to know that his son would have to die. Not just a normal death, such as a heart attack or death from old age, but Jesus had to suffer. Jesus had to give it all to God and say, “I’m yours, let it be finished.” Do you think that Jesus struggled in turning everything over to God? I think so, when he asked why he had been forsaken. God doesn’t want us  to suffer. God doesn’t want to us to hold anything back. God wants it all, the good, the bad and the ugly. God wants to take our lives, no matter how important or how minute and turn it into something wonderful.

Do I struggle in giving it all to God? Sure, an Christian does at some point in their life. What I strive for is to take one day at a time. As obstacles come before me, I try to focus on how God wants me to handle them. If I can’t do that alone, I ask God to help me. Life isn’t easy. I try to remember that with each curve ball that life throws at me, God is in the outfield. He is making sure that I can make around the bases because all God wants is for each of us to make it “HOME”.

Philippians 4:11 I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

Be the Attitude

Mathias is my youngest child. He was born with Prader Willi Syndrome and he was born with a love of God that I cannot explain. He starts kindergarten in the fall and they want him to write his name and tie his shoes by then. These things may or may not happen, but this 5 year old can explain and understands salvation. He plays "church" like most kids play with trucks. Yesterday, he was curious about Adam and Eve. For those who do not know about Prader Willi Syndrome, Mathias is always hungry because the appetite control center in his brain has a "hard wiring" issue.  He does pretty well most days but sometimes he is overcome with hunger and obsesses on food. I told him that Adam and Eve lived in Eden and he misunderstood and thought they were "eating in" and immediately wondered what restaurant they went to way back then.

Last night, he wanted the Bible read to him at bedtime. He loves John the Baptist stories so I read out of Matthew. He was not going to sleep so we made it all the way to the Beatitudes, or Jesus' sermon on the Mount. He laid there and listened and I wondered what he thought of the "attitudes" that Christ taught.

Matthew 5 CEV
³ God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom 
  of heaven!
⁴ God blesses those people
who grieve.
    They will find comfort!
⁵ God blesses those people
    who are humble.
The earth will belong
    to them!
⁶ God blesses those people
who want to obey him
    more than to eat or drink.
They will be given
what they want!

Wow. I have read this many times but reading it to Mathias put it all in perspective to me. In 3 short verses, Christ summarizes all my blog posts! These qualities are the very ones that I feel God has been laying on my heart for my own life.

Check out verse 6. THAT should be the reason we choose to fast. THAT reason alone because if we really seek to obey and follow Him, the rest of the stuff of life will get in line. 

I tell Denise all the time I have no idea what God has in store for Mathias, but that little boy is a kid after His heart. My boy fights giants everyday. It is 6:15AM here and soon I will hear the pitter thump of his feet and know he will want his breakfast and his coffee and I will do my best to help the little guy put on his armor to fight the giant hunger. Hunger here, is not a game, but a nasty enemy that wants to crush my baby boy. 

Mathias has a great heart and a great attitude. I feel like whooping up some giants.

What are some of the giants in your life that wreck your "attitude"? 

4 Myths of Suicide

Helplessness. Hopelessness. Poverty. Job loss.

Relationship problems. Economic downturns. Catastrophic illness and accidents.

All these lurk around every corner and each and everyone one of these and countless more make up the stress in our lives. Each of us deal with stress differently and each of us have a limit to what we can endure. As we each learn to deal with stress in our lives, we develop coping skills, some of which are better and healthier than others. Stress comes from every direction these days.

I often wonder what finally occurred that created the over abundance of stress in which the suicidal person saw death as the only solution. What, that day, finally swayed them in favor of permanently changing not only their life, but the lives of so many others? Survivors often try and put the clues together to solve this life and death mystery. Suicide is like a thief in the night. It comes in an robs you of something you can never reclaim.

The stealthy quality of suicide makes it difficult to detect and hard to understand. Because of this, many misconceptions and myths have taken shape over time. This is not an exhaustive list (this is a blog, for Pete’s sake) but awareness has to start somewhere.

4 MYTHS OF SUICIDE

1.     People who talk about it, won’t do. They just want attention

2.     Suicide cannot be really prevented

3.     Talking about suicide is bad because it gives a person ideas.

4.     People who commit suicide are crazy

People who talk about it, won’t do it.

This assumption ends up in countless and truly senseless suicides. Sometimes, when people are talking about it, they are trying to clue people in that they are feeling THAT defeated. Remember, I said in a previous post that a battle can end in a win, loss, draw or surrender. They are overcome and they surrender to the illogical thought of suicide. Plus, some feel by talking about it, the person is attempting to make it easier accomplish. If they say that it is okay enough times, they will convince themselves that it is acceptable.

Suicide cannot be really prevented

I have worked with so many professionals who will claim that if a person really intends on committing suicide, they will do it eventually. They see a person who attempts time and time again and finally, they succeed. Sadly, the load of stressors likely worsened over time and then their ability to cope diminished even more. Could an intervention aimed at helping a person discover solutions or at least offered a new perspective changed the eventual path of a suicidal person? Possibly and it would certainly be worth a chance.

 

Talking about Suicide only puts ideas in their heads.

This one always puzzled me. If it were that easy, all of you, send me all your money. I need to cut the blog short so I can go get the checks out of my mail box. The power of suggestion does not influence a persons’ decision to suicide. How are you going to know if a person is contemplating suicide if you do not ask? Yes, it is the hardest question you might ever ask. I sometimes even preface the question that way. It is honest and straightforward. That is all one can ask of a question. Oh, by the way, send me your money. So the power of suggestion myth in the context of suicide just does not hold water.

People Who Commit Suicide are Crazy

If this myth were true, it would be easier to intervene in those contemplating suicide. But, before we could do that, we would have to agree on a definition of “crazy”. Despite living in the year 2012, there remains a huge stigma for those suffering from mental illness. This stigma keeps people from seeking help, regardless of the severity of their mental illness. Suicide affects people of all ages, races, economic status and degrees of mental wellness.

Suicide must not be discounted and it can never be dismissed. We must remember that myths and assumptions in this case can adversely affect generations.

The Pain of Suicide

The old classic television show MASH opened up with an instrumental song. Some may not know the song is titled “Suicide is Painless”.  Few things could be further from the truth. Later in the song, it says, “it (suicide) brings on many changes” and that understates the effect of suicide. I have interviewed countless individuals contemplating suicide. Some were early in the process of thinking about it and others not only had a plan for suicide, but back up PLANS as well. Some have had the thought quickly pass through their mind and others have thought of nothing else for a very long time.

THE PERSON

People who contemplate and commit suicide rarely do so when everything is absolutely perfect. Usually, they are enduring pain of some type, and it can be physical, emotional, spiritual or psychological. This agony strips hope, faith and belief that things can get better. Many feel that have exhausted all possible solutions and remedies and that the only way they can escape from the agony of life is through death. To them, death stops the pain and a stoppage of pain means healing. Before you think I have lost my mind, put on your empathy shoes and look at it from another perspective. Individuals with painful terminal cancer sometimes suffer from pain more than the medications can control. They know they will lose the battle with cancer. Every battle has outcomes. One either wins, loses, draws or surrenders. To them, they are “healed” from the pain after death. The suffering (for them) has ended.

To say, for the person, that suicide is painless makes little sense. I cannot image the agony they go through as they weigh the pros and cons of taking their life. The person considering suicide sometimes has no way of knowing details about friends or family members. How many people have committed suicide in the morning without knowing their spouse found out they were expecting their first child that afternoon?

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

No matter how much a person has rationalized that suicide is acceptable, rarely family and friends will completely embrace that decision. Spouses are forced to endure as a single parent. Mothers and fathers must deal with the reality that the child they saw come into this world left abruptly. No matter how old a child becomes, a parent still will look at that child sometimes and see them dressed as a princess or a firefighter as they did when they were kids playing make believe. So, as a parent, no, I could not accept the decision of one of my children committing suicide. It would be beyond devastating. The abrupt nature of suicide stinks, especially if you had a relationship with them. 

Believe me, you will continually wonder what you could have done and why didn’t they just talk to me. Pain exists for family and friends and that pain lingers for a long time. I think that is one reason why suicide tends to run in families. A patterns and cycle of pain without a break in the cycle leads to suicide after suicide.

SITUATION

Can a situation have pain? I believe I can make an argument personifying a situation. Imagine a family reunion after a suicide. Do you think that there will be an overhanging cloud of pain darkening the festivities? Do you think some family will skip the reunion in order to avoid the pain? Does suicide affect a nurse practitioner who has spent hours getting to know and treating someone to find out they committed suicide after the NP moved to another state? Yes, the situation creates a self discussion debating whether it is even worth continuing in the profession. And yes, news like that does hurt deeply.

I read somewhere years ago while preparing for a speaking engagement that suicide end up impacting 10 people in a manner that seriously impacts the rest of their lives. After I read that, I began making mental notes of what I saw in reality, and I believe that figure rings true. Sadly, the initial suicide may start a cycle of suicide and the number of those involved grows exponentially.

Suicide Stinks

Anyone who knows me understands that I have loved sports my entire life. I have always found sports as a great way to escape from reality. Sadly, the reality of it is that my teams rarely win championships, but I still enjoy them. Sports, unfortunately, jumped the tracks from entertainment to my “professional” and spiritual side yesterday with the news of Junior Seau’s suicide. I did not know Mr. Seau, but I have known suicide way too often.

In one fashion or another, I have had a career dedicated to mental health and have been involved with mental health care since 1986. Let’s see, I have had acquaintances commit suicide. I have had co workers commit suicide. I have had patients commit suicide more times than I can recall. I have cut a person down who had decided to hang themselves. I have been involved and have led “psychological autopsies”, which is a major discussion and presentation after suicides. I have been an expert presenter on the topic of suicide.

I am dedicating the next few blog entries to the discussion of suicide. I plan on covering the subject with frankness and sincerity as I am convinced nothing rocks a person’s world like a suicide. One thing I want to emphasize is that I am not condemning anyone who has the thought cross his or her mind. Honestly, through my years of experience, I think at sometime in a moment of despair, the thought crosses the mind of the majority of people. This may be controversial and many of you will read this and say, “not me”, but many of you will also say to yourself, “How did he know?” My mind swirls with what direction I want to take this series of blogs. I want to thoroughly attack the subject and leave no stones unturned.

Misinformation and misconceptions about suicide exist everywhere. I believe that so many exist because suicide provokes emotion like nothing else. This comes from its absolute and definitive nature. Seau will never physically hug another of the hundreds, if not thousands of children he has helped over the years. Seau’s friends and family are now forced to deal with raw emotions and feelings that will always be one sided arguments and discussions. So many questions will go unanswered for the rest of their lives and closure will be elusive, if ever obtained. I am not going to supply hard core statistics about suicide. That would turn a blog into a research paper.

I will make this a 5 part series on suicide. Starting with the next post, I will discuss the following topics:

1

- .     Suicide is painless

2.     Suicide lurks in the shadows

3.     Suicide and the Bible

4.     Suicide and the family

5.     Suicide and hope

I pray that none of you experience suicide in any capacity. I can honestly say that suicide does scar a person and those emotional scars often run deep.