I received a late-night call a couple of weeks ago from my friend Kelsey. She had some sad news. One of our former classmates had hung himself in a closet with computer cables when he was at a party… they didn’t find him until several hours later.
I’d known Tony since middle school. For as long as I’d know him, he wore his straight brown hair at least as long as his shoulders. The times I saw him were some of the most chill times I’d experienced in high school; Tony was never in a hurry and he was always very personable. That may have had something to do with his frequent drug use—I can’t recall a time when it didn’t seem like he wasn’t at least partially stoned—but I doubt it…I think it ran much deeper than that.
Despite his less that decent “image,” Tony frequently hung out with me, Alicia, and Erika at school—interesting because we were considered Christian “goody-two-shoes” by most people’s standards.
When I first found out about Tony’s suicide, I handled it pretty well. My thought processing of his death pretty much stopped, however, when I passed a rope hanging loosely from a tree that night. I felt inhuman; when I fully realized the depth and consequences of his situation, I described my revelation to my class. I found myself choked up behind tears as I wrapped up my statement.
Two weeks later I finally felt the full weight of Tony’s death as if I was being pressed in at all sides. My heart started racing, my even breathing morphed into a desperate and strained heaving, my hands shook involuntarily, the room spun in my vision, and my limbs throbbed as every muscle in my body had seized up.
My temporarily hysterical physical response to Tony’s passing stemmed from my friend Danielle’s innocent comment made during our Faith and Learning Seminar: she said she needed to have the “faith conversation” with one of her friends. She said she’d known her for a long time, and that she knew she was a Christian, but she’d never talked to her about her faith.
I don’t think I ever had a “faith conversation” with Tony either. Questions flooded my mind…Where is Tony now? Did I ever invite him to church? Did I ever even have a serious conversation with him about my love for Jesus? What led him to take his own life? I know it’s not my fault that Tony is gone, but I know I loved him very much, more than I realized before.
I don’t know if Tony ever found Jesus, and I’ll never know what would have happened if I’d been able to fully convey what loving Jesus really meant to me. But there is one thing that I do know…. I hope I never pass up that chance again. People have told me for years that we should share our faith with our friends today because we don’t know if we’ll have a tomorrow or “maybe you’ll be the only one that can lead that friend to Jesus,” but it’s never been more real to me than it is right now.
I will never be one to have conversations with people just to win their souls; I’m still a firm believer that first you have to show them you love them for who they are with a love that comes with no agenda, but I also trust that God will present those necessary opportunities to talk to those people about Him in His timing.
