The Purpose of Mandy’s Life and Death

Address at a funeral led by Geoff Ryan

“All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. He comforts us in all our troubles so we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. You can be sure that the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. So when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your benefit and salvation! For when God comforts us, it is so that we, in turn, can be an encouragement to you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that as you share in suffering, you will also share in God’s comfort.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

P

urpose is a loaded word. It contains potential and power. It is a threat with positive and negative implications. “He did it with purpose; he has a purpose in mind; she did it on purpose; the purpose is not clear as yet; what is the purpose?” Purpose is all about intent and clarity. Purpose promises and ensures. Purpose is about focus and determination. It implies a plan and fleshes out the big picture. One can easily feel a cog or pawn or random entity in the face of purpose, particularly in the face of God’s purposes. His ways are not the ways of man and neither are his purposes. Not by a long shot.

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them”, so Paul the Apostle tells us in his Epistle to the Romans. There are those who insist this means that whatever happens is God’s will. That God’s will always wins out. It’s not true though and we all know it. If it were, there would not be millions of Christians daily praying: “…thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”. No point in praying for something to happen, if it already has. Experience teaches that prayer has little retroactive power. So our prayers are offered with an eye toward daily reality, cheering God on, hoping his purposes win the day because the alternative does not bear thinking about.

A better take on this is the understanding that God has the power to bring something good out of bad. When it counts, he can always pull a rabbit out of the hat and redeem something of worth out of any mess. According to Paul though, this promise is conditional, redeemable only by those who love God, by those whom God has “called according to his purpose for them.” But really, does anybody truly hate God? I have not met very many who do, to be honest. I have met plenty of people who are ambivalent toward him, dismissive even. But not many who are downright hostile toward him. After a fashion, most people are, if not in love with God, at least somewhat fond of him. They have an emotional attachment to him, which seldom leads to any lifestyle implications, and will not likely lead to heaven - but is benign and even cheerful. God, in fact, is doing rather well these days.

Are we all “called” though? Those called in this context can mean “the saved” (if one is a Calvinist Christian) or “anointed” (if a Pentecostal Christian) or simply that you have responded to God’s offer to lend purpose to the threat of an otherwise purposeless life. God is always available to blame if things go awry in any case. He is always willing to accept our praise is they turn up trumps. Without him, we would have to accept a random and capricious universe and this is a gamble few people will make (the vast majority of us not being gamblers by nature).

Die Everyday by Lincoln Hawk on SAYTUNES

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The God who hovered over the formless void of an uncreated world, fashioning beauty, life, meaning and purpose out of the darkness and chaos - this is a God with a plan. And a purpose. He was the one Humpty Dumpty should have waited for in order to be put back together again. He had the power. He is the giver and taker of life. Without him no life has meaning or purpose. Our task is to seek that purpose.

“The future belongs to those who give it hope.” (Teilhard de Chardin)

How does one grasp hope in the midst of hopelessness? How does one find grace in a place of pain? How does one redeem anything good from something so bad? Meaning? Purpose? What answer can be given to counter the finality of what has taken place? What purpose did it serve? Whose purpose did it serve? God’s?

It would seem that Mandy had it all - all of the things our culture prizes, values and considers worthy. She was beautiful and vivacious, all light and laughter, a girl men noticed and women envied. She was young, barely having embarked on the adventure of life. She was talented, a bright future beckoning. She was kind and caring, lit with an inner charm as a reflection of her outward beauty. She was “a dazzling imp”, according to one of you.

Why then, is she dead? Why did she die? What purpose did this death - of all deaths - serve?

Mandy died as a victim of our culture. Her illness was a true 21st century malady, one that many suffer from. Underneath Mandy’s radiant smile and cheerful demeanour yawned a depth of loneliness and isolation that was terrifying. There existed a place which even Mandy’s closest friends were allowed to glimpse only fleetingly, from time to time, more hinted at than anything else. It was the place where Mandy spent most of her time though, a dark place that she would alternately run from or run to, depending on the day or night. Was she running away from it last Saturday when it finally overtook her and overwhelmed her? Or was she running to it to be swallowed whole and finally? We will never know. The end result is the same.

“The grim shape / Towered up between me and the stars, and still, / For so it seemed, / with purpose of its own / And measured motion like a living thing, / Strode after me.” (William Wordsworth)

What has happened to Mandy? Where is she now? Where has she gone? Many of you have links to a variety of Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox - and consequently you find your grief is mixed with apprehension and fear. You have questions you have not asked, because you are afraid that you already know the answers. After all, Mandy did kill herself.

On many matters, the Christian Scriptures are less adamant than religious people would have us believe. On one point, however, little ambiguity is permitted. People are not to judge one another. We can make a judgment call on another person - assessing their character, examining their motives, taking note of their actions and their lives. To judge as God judges though, to decide heaven or hell for a person… this is God’s exclusive purview and clearly off limits for us humans.

Only God ever has all the facts at his disposal. Only God can truly see into the heart and soul of a matter or a motive or a murder. Only God was in the apartment last Saturday night when Mandy fought her demons and wrestled with her fears for the last time. Only God accompanied her as she finally walked out of her depth of weary pain…or down into it. Only God knows what happened and why. He is our best hope for discerning a purpose and a point to it all. In fact, he is our only hope.

“Betwixt the stirrup and the ground / Mercy I asked, mercy I found.” (William Camden)

Where is Mandy? None of us know for sure and the saying goes: “When in doubt - leave it out.” I do know a few things for sure, though. God is good. God is love. God is just and fair. God loves Mandy far more than any of us ever have or ever will or ever could. His mercy, justice and love can be trusted. His love for Mandy can be trusted.

Face to face with God, Mandy is known now as I think she always wanted to be known - fully and without pretence. The loneliness gone, the fear dispelled, the ache soothed and healed. She can rest. For us there remains the love we have for her, the hope that she has found peace, and the faith that God’s mercy is applied as we ourselves would apply it, were we God. The love is a given, that is why you are here today. I invite you to also share in this hope and faith.

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12,13)

What happens now? What of us who are left behind - Mandy’s family, friends and lovers? After all, the purpose of a funeral is to serve the living, not the dead. This body is not Mandy, any more than your shadow is you. She is gone, but we are left and we have gathered together in memorial because of our love for Mandy. It is ourselves we grieve for, at the end of the day. But how to grieve?

“Greater love has no one than this, that she lay down her life for her friends.” (John 15:13).

In speaking with those who knew Mandy best, time and again people spoke of her care and concern for others and the manner in which she would deflect concern expressed for her toward the needs of others. She was a caring support during hurt and trouble and a willing sharer of joys and victories. In part, this may have been a defensive reflex to protect herself from a world that she often found threatening. As with all children, Mandy was one of creation’s vulnerable beings. This is not a full or adequate explanation, however.

Mandy was truly interested in others. She genuinely engaged with their needs and hurts. I read the letter she left behind last Saturday. It was a long letter. In it she spoke of her pain and fear. She spoke of how tired she was. Mostly, though, she wrote about other people and her concern for how they would be affected, confused and hurt by the choice she was about to make. In those last minutes of her life on earth, the time was long past for defensive measures or the charade of deflection. The mask was fully off and Mandy spent those last moments thinking mostly of others.

Here we stumble upon grace and a hint of redemption and this helps us to muster some hope. Mandy has left us a clue as to how something good can be redeemed out of something bad. There was a purpose to Mandy’s life as there is a purpose to any life. Dare we hope there was a purpose to her death as well?

“The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”
(Ernest Hemingway)

Can Mandy’s death be understood as serving a redemptive purpose? Does the tragedy of her suicide negate the meaning of her life? Or can it, in fact, bring healing? The answers to those questions will not come today as we stumble about in our grief, with her loss burning in our stomachs, with our hearts breaking. Later however, as the days turn into nights, the weeks into months and as the acute pain of the present loses its sharp edge and dulls to a low throb, then the answers will gather and present themselves, sent by God. At those times we become most authentically ourselves, lying awake in our beds wrestling with our fears and inadequacies, our skeletons rattling in our closets. Months and maybe even years from now, meaning will emerge and purpose become discernable - if we are open and receptive. It is then that we will have to decide what finally to do with Mandy’s death. Not now, but then.

“Afraid of being alone, yet terrified of intimacy, (we stare face-to-face and say nothing)”. (John W. Whitehead)

A good place to start looking is inside ourselves first. Then up and around, at the other people in this room. There are no shortage of “Mandys” present today. Maybe you are one of them. The illness that slowly took over Mandy’s body and mind stealing her life, this is real and it is all around us. It is in many of us. “The worst disease in the world is loneliness”, a man once told me. I now understand that to be true. It is what killed Mandy. Many of you are dying from it as well.

A fitting way to remember Mandy, the only fitting way, is to invest her short life and hard death with meaning - to give it purpose. We need to learn from it. We need to reference it to God and ask for his investment in it. We need to look in the mirror at ourselves. We need to look into each other’s faces.

“By a departing light / we see acuter quite / Than by a wick that stays. / There’s something in the flight / That clarifies the sight / And decks the rays.” (Emily Dickinson)

If Mandy will have been able to achieve this in her death - to have given a greater clarity to us and a light by which we can see and understand things as they really are – then all is not lost, for this a good thing. By laying down her life as she has done and acquiescing to that illness which afflicts so many of us, she has left us a lesson to be learned, if we are willing. To ignore it, is to disregard the value of Mandy’s life. To minimize it, is to dismiss the possibility of any purpose to her death. To fail to learn from it will prove fatal to more of us.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me! / I once was lost / but now am found / Was blind but now I see. (John Newton)

Writer: Co-founder and co-editor of theRubicon and co-ordinator of the 614 Network, Geoff and his wife Sandra minister in Regent Park, a social housing project in downtown Toronto, Canada.

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