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    Surviving the Unthinkable: Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die
    Surviving the Unthinkable: Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die
    Surviving the Unthinkable: Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die
    Ebook74 pages1 hour

    Surviving the Unthinkable: Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die

    By Don J. Payne and Gordon MacDonald

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    About this ebook

    Losing a dearly loved family member or friend suddenly, unexpectedly, and tragically jars us at our very core. We shudder at the thought of it. When that loss results from a suicide it defies and assaults everything in us. The unthinkable is often considered not survivable. In Surviving the Unthinkable theology professor Don J. Payne exits the classroom and invites you into the chambers of his personal experience of that indescribable loss. This intensely personal narrative traces his process through shock, grief, anger, fear, and a host of unexpected sensations to redemption and hope. Yet, he offers no psychological analysis or formula to make it all OK. Here you will find hope--gritty, realistic hope that will deepen the resources of anyone who walks the unthinkable path of losing someone they love to suicide. Life on the other side of such a nightmare will never be the same, but there is life and it can be good. Don Payne gives voice to the experience in a way that extends a healing hand to any who wonder if they can survive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781498230643
    Surviving the Unthinkable: Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die
    Author

    Don J. Payne

    Don J. Payne is Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of Theology and Ministry at Denver Seminary, Denver, Colorado. After earning the MDiv from Denver Seminary, he served for eight years as a minister in the Evangelical Free Church of America. He holds the PhD from the University of Manchester (Nazarene Theological College).

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    • 5/5
      Going through the same thing. Just lost my Bestfriend yesterday so don’t know how to keep going. This book has really helped me

    Book preview

    Surviving the Unthinkable - Don J. Payne

    9781498230636.kindle.jpg

    Surviving the Unthinkable

    Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die

    Don J. Payne

    Foreword by Gordon MacDonald

    resource.jpg

    SURVIVING THE UNTHINKABLE

    Choosing to Live After Someone You Love Chooses to Die

    Copyright © 2015 Don J. Payne. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

    Resource Publications

    An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

    199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

    Eugene, OR 97401

    www.wipfandstock.com

    ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3063-6

    EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3064-3

    Manufactured in the U.S.A.

    Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Foreword

    Preface

    Introduction

    1. Restaurants

    2. Mars

    3. New

    4. Caring

    Conclusion

    Bibliography

    To my family

    Foreword

    Some months ago, our oldest granddaughter, Erin, a college sen­ior, called to say that a personal friend of hers had ended his life. To describe her as distraught, momentarily inconsolable, would be an understatement. My wife, Gail, and I tried hard to be a source of strength to our granddaughter, but we both shared the troubling feeling that there were many things we simply did not understand as to why one would want to terminate life and what might be the effect upon those who are known as suicide-survivors.

    Then, just a few days after Erin’s phone call, a good friend, Dr. Don Payne, reached me and asked if I would consider writing a brief foreword to a book which was to be titled, Surviving the Unthinkable. He’d written the book, he said, out of the experience of losing his brother, Bob, to a death by suicide.

    Of course, I said yes.

    Soon a draft of Don’s manuscript was in my hands. I read it straight through—unable to put it down—and was deeply touched. My first thought upon finishing Surviving the Unthinkable was that it was exactly what our granddaughter needed while in the grasp of her own deep grief. With Don’s permission I immediately emailed my copy to her. A day later Erin phoned me. Her gratitude for the book was immense. As had been my experience, the book had touched her broken heart.

    I am confident that that same experience will happen to many others when this wonderful Don-Payne writing reaches them. In one of the book’s earliest paragraphs, the author says of himself and his family, We are now members of a club that no one wants to join. Don goes on to describe exactly what that club membership (so to speak) entails. As a storyteller he narrates the horrific chain of events that loved ones, the survivors, experience as they try to make sense of the loss of one whom they have loved and would do anything to have back.

    But Surviving the Unthinkable is not just a story about emotional and spiritual pain. You see, Don Payne is an experienced theologian, and, calling upon his theological disciplines and extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, he offers a treasure of insights for any reader seeking a way to think about such unspeakable tragedies.

    I’m grateful that throughout this book Dr. Payne never attempts to go for easy answers to the matter of suicide. He writes with a startling candor. You can easily detect his paralyzing bewilderment, his unbearable anguish when the call comes informing him that his brother is gone. But there is also an obvious maturity and wisdom that quickly rises to stabilize his tumbling soul.

    In the course of the book Don Payne speaks of the evil embedded in the act of suicide. He talks about how it radiates deep hurt into a multitude of people. He puts words like forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption on the table and offers clarity about how they work. Oh, let me also add: there’s a lot of hope in this book. But it’s a hope scarred by a torment none of us would ever volunteer to undergo.

    I am encouraged by Don Payne’s description of the goodness of people (friends) who genuinely cared for him and his grieving family. And I was warmed by what Don calls weird (his word-choice) incidents which he doesn’t bother to defend but which provoke consoling effects. The reader wonders, were these weird things also part of God’s way of speaking into Don Payne’s life? And the answer as far as I’m concerned? Probably.

    Toward the end of this intimate book are interesting bits of counsel that may surprise a reader or two. Samples? Don says partying (with good friends, of course) is helpful. Wholesome laughter is important. And for Don Payne anyway, drinking lots of upscale flavored coffee is a must. I would not have expected this last one, but it worked for him.

    Let me be frank. Whether or not you are a survivor of a suicidal event, you need to read every word of this book. Don’t skim it. Rather, let it trickle down into your soul. That’s what I did. And that’s what our granddaughter, Erin, did. And, in both of our experiences God spoke powerfully through the words of a special friend.

    Gordon MacDonald

    Chancellor, Denver Seminary

    Preface

    In the small bookcase directly across from my desk is a book entitled If You Want to Write. I have never read it. It belonged, somewhat ironically, to my brother, who envisioned himself as something of a writer—and whose suicide was the occasion for this book. I did not want to write this book. In the course of our lives most of us occasionally stumble across and are forced to face daunting tasks

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