Thoughts about the tragic death of Robin Williams

Last Monday I was enjoying the great city of Seattle, Washington, watching Felix Hernandez take care of the Toronto Blue Jays in classic Felix fashion. He was as dominant as always, and I was pumping my fist as the Mariners put up seven runs in the sixth inning when I heard the news: actor/comedian Robin Williams had tragically chosen to take his own life. That news certainly dulled the moment, and then later when I had a chance to watch a little news and read a couple of headlines, the facts of his death underscored the tragedy of the moment. The comedian who could make anyone laugh, famous for his many Hollywood starring roles and off-color standup comedy, struggled to find lasting happiness in his own life. News stories emerged detailing his history of substance abuse and addiction, as well as a fairly constant struggle with depression.

On Tuesday morning, Facebook and Twitter were ablaze with comments about Robin’s death. People were sharing their favorite Williams’ jokes and movies, posting memes of him from many of his famous movie characters and linking to Youtube videos of their favorite movie moments. A comedy icon had died and no one was laughing.

By Tuesday afternoon the blog world was buzzing with reflection on Robin’s death (apparently I’m a couple days behind!). Many people began sharing their identification with Williams’ struggle with depression while others just shared heartbreak over his passing and the tragic sense of hopelessness that must have filled his last days on earth. It seemed like few people had any kind of beef with Robin, as a comedian, humanitarian or actor.

I’ve spent the last few days reading blogs, new stories and Facebook posts about this event and have reflected a lot on the sadness of his death. In doing so, I’ve had four thoughts going through my head that I want to share with you. I would love your thoughts and input to develop these even further.

First, and maybe most importantly, Robin’s death reinforces the value of every life. As a pop-culture icon, Robin Williams taking his own life carries with it a tragedy of news-worthy proportion, but it represents a story that repeats itself 110 times every day in the U.S. While his death makes more news because of his international fame, it doesn’t mean that his life was more valuable than the 16-year-old who suffocated himself because of intense bullying, the 13-year-old cheerleader who overdosed because of a naked picture of her gone viral or the 42-year-old dad who shot himself because of a lost job and the shame of telling his wife that he’d been out of work for months. Every life is valuable.

I wish all people who feel so grieved about the loss of Robin’s life, felt the same grief about the loss of every life! Created uniquely by God, humans stand distinct in the universe as carrying the marks of Image Bearers of the Almighty (Genesis 1:26-27). According to Psalm 139, that means God was intimately and personally involved in the inside-out creation of every human being ever conceived. And that means no life is made more valuable because of what it does or doesn’t do, any more than the value of a life is diminished by what it accomplishes or fails to achieve.

To be human is to be valuable.

Secondly, the tragic death of a celebrity always reminds us that people are, at their core, just people. Celebrities are not the iconic figures they represent on the stage or big screen, they are simply gifted people (in most cases) in a particular aspect of pop-culture. Something has made them popular to a large segment of the world around them, but that doesn’t remove them from their fundamental identity as part of the human race. We may try to make them more than that, but all our efforts will fail in vain regardless of the fame or “bigger than life” status that person may achieve.

Being human means being broken and having needs. Celebrity status seems to create an impossible image of someone; an image that may come from our own perception of what the perfect “us” would be like. In other words, if we could finally arrive at the perfect person, it would be the celebrity singer, actor, model or athlete that we elevate to near god-like status. But that person doesn’t exist, instead, all persons face the same reality from a sin-soaked world -- we are a broken race. A casual glance at the world around us reveals the brokenness in which we all live: you, me and sadly Robin Williams, too.

To be human is to be broken.

Thirdly, every human being longs for deep and meaningful connection. In a day and age when connection is readily available, we seem hard-pressed for intimacy and transparency. I’m always amazed when I read the story of creation in Genesis 1-2, that after God created Adam, a perfect man in a perfect world engaging with a perfect God, that our God utters these words, “It is not good for man to be alone.” In fact, it almost seems sacrilegious to imply that being close to God isn’t enough to sustain us, but it's a fact that God created us for connection, not only with Him but with our fellow man as well. And not just as a good idea, but as a necessary and fundamental component of our existence!

Today I spent a little time surfing Facebook, and I was shocked to realize how many posts were made in an attempt to make some sort of significant connection. One young lady’s post was truly a cry for help, as she begged people to engage with her thoughts or ideas. A platform that allows for unfiltered personal expression is not the same things has having intimate connection. (And no, I’m not making any judgment on the various forms of social media, I’m simply stating that mass personal exposure doesn’t expressly translate into intimate personal connection.)

To be human is to be in need in intimate connection.

Finally, as the details of Robin’s suicide surface, we must be compelled to see the people around us with new eyes. I wonder how many people noticed something was off with Robin, but chose not to reach out, or assumed that he must be fine because he is the wildly loved and successful Robin Williams? How many people do we know, do we see, do we speak to and do we pass every day who are “fine on the outside” but screaming for help on the inside? How many people reading this blog wish someone would care enough to look them in the eyes and ask, “how are you doing?” and then actually stick around for the answer?

As I’m sitting here at the airport writing this, thousands of people are marching by en route to some appointment, somewhere. Some are probably heading out to meet family, others flying to a business appointment, while still others, like me, are just trying to make it back home. Despite walking shoulder to shoulder with scores of people and making eye contact with thousands of individuals while walking the concourses at the world’s busiest airport, how many of them feel as alone as if they were they were the only person in the terminal?

To be human is to be aware of the problem.

To be super-human, however, is to do something about the problem.

Lasting change happens when people have a personal encounter with the personal God, and often, that personal encounter happens when one of God’s people embraces the Overboard Life and reaches out to someone in need. No, I’m not suggesting that every problem we face is simply resolved as a spiritual matter. Yes, I am suggesting that a relationship with God is vital to long-term health and true healing that occurs from the inside, out.

Because we are a broken people, we must find healing from the One who experienced the reality of our brokenness, without personally being broken. Jesus Christ came to experientially understand our condition, by knowing hunger and pain, heartache and loss and even betrayal and anger (Hebrews 4-7). But in His experience, He never once sinned or violated God’s sacred Law. As a result, we have a compassionate God who sympathizes with us in every way, and longs to fill us with hope, love, grace, mercy and healing. That super-human filling frees us to reach out to others who need the same touch!

Will you be the one to reach out to someone desperate for help, someone who needs more than a smile and a casual “how are you doing?” Will you embrace the value of every life and ask God to help you reach out?

Go ahead and take the plunge, others are in desperate need of what you have to offer!

Are you participating in your own life?

About seven or eight years ago, Traci and I were at a crossroads in our lives. The alphabets (AJ, BJ & CJ) had all been born and we were in the throes of parenting. We had taken on a boat load of debt due to several big medical expenses, the purchase of a family car, the total collapse of our sewer system (yes, that’s as fun as it sounds!) the loss of a furnace, and on and on. We were feeling the weight and pressure of debt, of raising small children and of trying to keep our marriage alive (not just together!).  

Traci had just finished up a third round of seminars hosted by Klemmer and Associates, and was starting to push through some of the junk in life that keeps us from growing and moving forward. As she has said in her own speaking and blogging, “I wasn’t even participating in my own life.” She had been struggling with depression brought on after child birth, and we were both struggling to just get through each day: it’s like survival was all we were after.

After Traci’s most recent seminar, we began to talk more about the future and our dreams, and both of us were becoming convinced that just surviving life wasn’t enough. My job at the church was going well, but it had become a bit stagnant; the new systems and calendar I had put in place were the new “norm” and I been taking it easy in cruise control.

That’s when it happened.

One of the elders in my church, Kent Kersey, came to me after services on Sunday and asked if I had read Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years? I was not a Donald Miller fan, which he knew, and I politely declined. He told me that it was a great book and that I really should consider reading it. In fact, he gave me a copy and said I needed to take it with me to the camp I was speaking at the next week.

I thanked him for the book, and since Kent is one of the best thinkers I know, I believed what he said about the book. I packed it away for our trip to Northern California to speak at a summer camp just outside Eureka and figured I’d at least start reading it when we got there.

On Monday morning I picked up the book and by Tuesday afternoon I had finished it. I

handed it to Traci and she read it by Thursday and then I read it again before we left on Saturday. I’ve read it a couple of times since then. Essentially, Donald Miller used this book to explain that he had been a spectator to his own life. When Christian artist/producer/singer/director Steve Taylor approached Don about making a movie of Don’s life, Miller realized he didn’t have much of a life. He had written a lot about life, he had challenged people to live a better life, but he himself was sitting an armchair, watching others live and writing about it.

Through this process of recognizing his lack of living, Don embarked on a journey to have a life worth reading about; to make a life that would be worthy of a movie. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years tells about Don’t journey from armchair critic to active participant in life.

And it struck a nerve with me and with Traci. We were at our own crossroads, trying to figure out how to make our marriage, and our parenting and our ministry and our business(es) be more about just surviving. We didn’t want to wake up each day just trying to survive, just trying to make it to the end of the day so we could sleep, wake and repeat. We wanted a life worth sharing or writing about, we wanted to have a marriage that would shine as an example for other couples struggling like us and we wanted to live for something so much bigger than ourselves.

When we got back from the camp, we were full of ideas, and slowly we began to implement them. I set up my first blog and began some semi-regular writing. Traci and I started dreaming about some service projects that our whole family could be a part of and then began to move forward, together. Traci continued her personal growth seminars, I started being coached and began reading other books that would help lay a path for our dreams.

Suddenly, it was as if we were back in the thrill of experiencing life again; we were participating in our own lives! Don’t get me wrong, our daily existence and routine didn’t instantly become easy. The path wasn’t laid with gold bricks, the skies weren’t always blue and the sun did not always shine. Instead, we began to realize that we didn’t need gold paths, blue skies and sunshine in order to experience the richness of life. Traci and I began to choose to fully embrace our lives regardless of our circumstances. We decided that life is a God-given adventure, and sitting on the sidelines to watch it pass by was no longer an option.

During that season, the words of John 10:10 became very real to me: Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The Message translates it this way: “A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” Does that sound like the description of a life you’d want to stand by and watch? Of course not, that’s the kind of life all of us want to live -- we want to be a part of a life like that!

Are you watching your own life pass by? Are you caught up in just trying to survive each day, hoping to fall asleep at the end of it and wake up and repeat in the morning? I’ve been there, and I can tell you that there’s something better than just surviving! I can’t promise you a quick fix, better circumstances or a fuller bank account. But I can promise you a fuller life, a better reason for getting up each day and a future worth dreaming about. The life God wants to give you is “real...more...and better” than anything you could ever dream up on your own.

Will you trust Him with your life? Will you take action in faith, believing that God can guide your steps to the best life possible? We can embrace life in all of it’s goodness, struggle, tension, joy, sorrow, pain and victory and we can enjoy it’s richness by experiencing it fully through Jesus.

36 down, 4 to go!

Go ahead and take the plunge, life is always better on the water!

My second book, Project Nehemiah, is all about embracing the remarkable life God has for each of us. You can purchase a copy here if you're interested in more!

Take 3

Have you ever thought of the benefits of knowing God? I know, seems almost disrespectful to say there are “benefits” to being a child of God, like it’s wrong that we should get anything out of it. After all, we sinned, we broke the rules, Jesus had to die for us…why should we gain anything else out of that deal? We shouldn’t, but that’s part of what makes God’s love so amazing.

As you get going into your day today, take these three simple thoughts with you, all from Psalm 103:

David writes, “Praise the Lord, O my Soul, and forget not all his benefits:

[God] forgives all your sins (103:3): (spiritual healing)

Do I need to say anything else to this? Nothing you have done, or will do, could ever put you in a position to be unforgiven by God. He forgives murderers, rapists, drunks, crack heads, angry fathers, abusive mothers, rebellious children, road ragers, thieves, liars, adulterers and sex addicts. He forgives the humble and the arrogant, He forgives the heart breaker and vengeful. Anyone who calls out for forgiveness, will be forgiven by God. It is an awesome benefit of being one of His children.

[God] heals all of your diseases (103:3): (physical healing)

Not only is God able to meet all of our spiritual needs, He is able to meet all of our physical needs as well. In the Western world, we are so blessed by accessible medicine and medical advancements, but often we forget that the Great Healer needs neither. I’m all for medical breakthroughs and the appropriate use of medicine in the treatment of disease and physical illness. But even more, I’m grateful for a God who is able to heal completely. He doesn’t do partial healings. While He may choose to allow an illness to continue -- for reasons greater than I could ever fathom -- He isn’t limited any way, by any sickness. Even when I seek medical attention, I still call out to Him for divine intervention because it is a great benefit of knowing God!

[God] redeems my life from the pit (103:4): (emotional healing)

God meets my spiritual needs. God can meet my physical needs. But the benefit of knowing God goes another step -- He can redeem me from the emotional mess I often find myself in. God can lift the spirits of the depressed, mend the wound of a broken heart, bring peace where there is anxiety, strengthen faith where there is fear and He can rescue the lost wanderer. God loves His children and loves to reach into the mire of our heartache in order to bring healing and restoration.

Do you need to be forgiven today? Is your body in need of the Great Healer? Are you living in the pit right now, desperate for a way out? Go to the Lord today, and trust that He is able to come to your aid. Trust that He has not abandoned you, nor will He ever. Be encouraged, if you are a child of God, there are great benefits to knowing Him, you just have to step out in faith and trust His provision for your life.

Go ahead and take that plunge, life is always better on the water!