Rest in peace.

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. And it hits you square between the eyes.

I found out last week that someone I know, someone who has been very influential in my professional life, someone who became a friend over years of working together, died. The next day, I found out he'd committed suicide.

This was a great heartbreak. I'm sad that my friend is gone, but far more than that, I'm deeply pained that he was hurting so deeply, so profoundly, and none of us who knew him and saw him almost every day had any idea.

We all knew he was under stress. But so were many of us. We knew his situation was potentially more dire than our own - he had fewer options than many of us if things went badly for him. But this man seemed tough, in an old cowboy, biker, trucker, Johnny Cash kinda way. I couldn't conceive of him just simply splintering one day...quietly and alone. On a Tuesday. It just wasn't possible.

Except it was. And I never saw it coming. And now he's gone. And he's never coming back. Not even for lunch at Hill's Cafe. It is tragedy.

Some people are heartless about suicide. They say the victim is selfish or cowardly. But they're wrong. When someone is willing to take that ultimate step, it is quite simply an act of hopelessness. It is the act of someone hurting with their entire being, who looks ahead and sees nothing but the same. It is the desperation of feeling that even one more day of what is and what lies ahead is just plain unendurable. It is a human being broken. And that should engender sympathy, not scorn. It should cause you to drop to your knees and pray that God will take this broken soul into his care and heal away the hurt, as only He can do. Any one of us can be shattered. Any one of us could find ourselves looking ahead at what seems unbearable.

So I pray for you, my friend. God keep you.