An Important Night

Last night we had a viewing of the movie "To Save a Life" for our parents at our church. We invited a speaker from a local suicide prevention group to come and speak afterwards and it was an amazing night of education and a big reality check! We have about 15 kids in our youth group and we had 9 parents come to see the movie so I think that was a good turnout. The parents I think got the message about how important it is that they are educated on the warning signs of suicide. I know that this past week several of you probably logged on to my blog and were disappointed to see that I was posting again about suicide, but I will tell you that after hearing what I heard last night, I know that what I am doing is RIGHT! What I learned last night was that our speaker has helped not just two 10 year olds who wanted to commit suicide but that she also had to help a 5 year old who had a plan to take his life. If that isn't a reality check I don't know what is. That made it clear that raising awareness is exactly what we should be doing. Our speaker knows that first hand. She lost her son 4 years ago to suicide. And for all of you parents who read this, she had NO warnings. He was a good student, he didn't do drugs . He was in the airforce and they had a very closes and open relationship with him. He knew he could come to them with anything. One of the most important things she said last night to us was that none of us are exempt from experiencing what she did. She thought he had no warning signs until she educated herself on what the signs were, it turns out that he had every one of them the week before he died. If you take anything away from my blog posts over the last week, take this. Educate yourself . Don't be naive and think that it can't happen to you. Our kids go through hell now in school. They don't just get bullied in the locker room, they get humiliated on the internet. If you watched the movie I posted last week, I googled everyone of those kids stories and what I found was that almost all of them were bullying suicides and the 2 youngest  and almost all of the boys were bullied and teased relentlessly and called gay. These were 11 year olds.  Boys are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide. Why are we raising our kids to be homophobic. GOD made everyone and he is the only one who has the right to judge someone. When we teach our sons not to cry, not to have emotions, not to be a sissy, not to be weak, and not to be vulnerable that is exactly what we are teaching them. That is why we have generations of men who are incapable of expressing their emotions . They have been taught that it's wrong. It's not wrong, it's part of being a human being. Everyone should be allowed to have emotions and no one should tell them it's wrong. My eyes are wide open today as to what happens and I will continue to raise awareness on my blog because it IS important.