A week ago Friday I picked my wife up from work, our 3 year old riding in his seat in the back singing and pointing out fire trucks and windmills as we drove across town to to the grocery store. We pulled into a spot and started making a list – after all, the only bigger mistake to make than going grocery shopping without a list, is going while hungry.
As we sat there chatting about what to get, watching grey clouds roll in, my phone buzzed with a text message from a friend of mine. “Dave, I just heard about Jarod. I’m so sorry.”
I looked at my wife and we both sat there confused and horrified for a moment. Neither of us had no idea what was going on, and I asked him to clarify.
“I’m so sorry, I thought you would have heard by now. Jarod took his own life today.”
It didn’t make sense. We didn’t have a category for this information, because…we thought we knew him. As we learned more about the circumstances surrounding everything, our grief and the grief of many others was mingled with the question that always seems to come up when someone reflects on someone who recently committed suicide: “Why couldn’t he just talk to me? To somebody?”
I met my friend Jarod shortly after I started going to Christ Community Church. He was a regular musician there, and on staff helping, among other things, to coordinate with the small group leaders. He and I developed a friendship that developed over many years. We had many things in common – we were both musicians, albeit of a very different variety; Jarod was a singer and songwriter who played guitar and taught many students, while I was a tuba player with on-and-off times playing with New Orleans brass bands in town. We were both strongly in the “reformed” mindset of Christianity, though over the years we parted ways on certain issues; he wound up developing convictions that led him and his wife Morgan to leave the Baptist tradition and join an Anglican church, while I grew more firm in my credobaptist and church autonomy convictions.
But through all that we remained close. While that was going on I started my previous podcast, formerly known as Spurgeon Audio, then Kings Way Talk. When I wanted to have a regular partner to discuss subjects, my first choice was Jarod. We’d always spent hours many weekends up at the local cigar shop discussing the books we were reading, the goings-on of our lives, and the struggles of sin and faith we were working through. He sat with me and listened as I discussed issues like my previous marriage collapsing and trying to find healing in that. He was a tremendous encouragement to me in very dark times, and an incredible blessing in good ones. He served as a groomsman for my marriage to Ravyn and led us all in worship for the service.
When we’d get behind the microphone his insights were always helpful. He helped me think through my own maturing faith in new ways, and helped me to get away from looking at my faith as a matter of “us versus the world” and more as a matter of “serving those around us in patient love.” Because of his encouragement I was able to grow in new ways as I saw the deeper truth underlying the reality of God’s gracious and sovereign rule over our world. Our discussions especially helped me think through the dangers of valuing certainty over truth.
So when I read those texts, I was shocked and horrified to my very core. My good friend, my brother, wasn’t just dead – he’d taken his own life. I was shocked, because I couldn’t imagine him feeling like he couldn’t just talk to me about difficult things. I couldn’t picture him reaching that level of despair.
But then I took another step in thinking about it that I found later many of my friends who’d known Jarod were also doing: I began asking myself, “What would drive me to that level?” I know my sin tendencies. I am well aware of the ways in which I tend to fall when life’s pressures are turned up. Is there a fear, a frustration, a doubt that could grow like a weed in my heart to the point that I begin to believe I can’t dare confide in someone else? Or that even if I do find that someone, that my life is about to be blown open in irreversible ways?
I don’t know. I don’t think any of us truly know the depths of our own hearts, and only God can say He knows us to that level. So grief and confusion become mingled with a flavor of fear and self-doubt in such a time. And then there’s the anger. Anger at myself for not pursuing our friendship harder than I had been in the days leading up to it. For not somehow knowing what even his closest family didn’t know. And anger at him, for not knowing – he could have come to me. To someone.
Honestly there are lots of questions I’ve wrestled with over the course of the last week. But as I do, I find myself sitting in the dirt with Job, my hand over my mouth. My wisdom is so small, and I certainly have no special insight into his mind in those last moments. All I do know is God’s character. I know God is merciful and kind. I know His grace is greater than we can imagine. I know that our salvation is His work, not our own.
And so, I grieve the loss of my friend. I grieve my brother. And I trust to God’s perfect wisdom and love for Jarod, and for myself. I’ve had dark moments in my life and I’ve known those who have died, but this is a uniquely difficult flavor of sadness. But as Paul said, I don’t grieve as one without hope. I look to the day that I will see him again. And I am incredibly grateful for all those around us who are grieving in this time who are offering comfort and wise counsel, who are helping us to turn our eyes to Jesus and find our hope there even in this dark time.
I would like to close by asking you to consider supporting his widow Morgan in this time, to help offset funeral costs and to give her what she needs as she works through this tragic period: time, to heal and to see what her next steps will be. You can find the GoFundMe being managed by one of her church leaders at this link. And if there is anyone reading this who is finding that despair growing, who is beginning to think on some level that this “permanent solution to a temporary problem” is the right choice – please, find someone to talk to. Know that you’re not alone. You can even send me an email. Our life in Christ is not made to be run on our own, but we are to bear one another’s burdens, and yours is not too great for such a grace.
Coronation Radio 