Loving the unlovable

Just before Christmas 2020, my daughter's ex husband killed himself . I'm still struggling to understand. He wasn't a very nice man. He drank a lot, he was mean to my daughter and their three children. His second wife left him because of his drinking and the meaness. He was a navy corpsman, he had been to Iraq and Afghanistan I don't know how many times. As a corpsman, his job was to try to keep soldiers who had been wounded from dying. He also had to pick up body parts of the guys blown up by IEDs. Some of those body parts belonged to his friends. I can't even begin to imagine the horror he lived with in his mind. My daughter said when they were married, he would wake up screaming. Drinking kept the horrors at bay. Meaness kept people from getting too close and maybe penetrating his protection.

So now what, God? He's dead. He's with you. Will you show him the mercy and love and compassion and understanding that he didn't get here? I don't know if there was anyone in his life who prayed for him. I know I didn't. My daughter said he had begun texting her about a week before he died. He had told her he knew he needed to get help and had made plans to go to a facilitiy in Texas. He apologized for his abuse towards her and the kids. Then a day later, his mother called my daughter to tell her he had killed himself. And in the evening, two navy men came to my daughter's door. The navy would pay for her and the children to fly to his funeral. Doesn't really help him much.

We, as fellow humans, have no idea of the unending, truly unbearable, massive torment that may be going on in others. Their outward behavior doesn't always tell the truth of what's in their minds. We, as God's children, really, really need to drop the charade that this matters or that matters or this is important or that is important. It doesn't. It isn't. Only love. I let my ex-son-in-law down because I didn't even try to love him. I couldn't look past the facade of toughness/meanness he had put up to protect himself. I want Jesus' love to live in me. Always, continuously, only. I don't want to be rebuffed because someone hurts my feelings or doesn't agree with me, or is just a complete ogre. I want to learn to love purely, cleanly, totally, selflessly the way Jesus did. Please, people, just love. Love. That's the only thing that will matter in the end. How well we loved. Especially the unloveable.