To Save a Life: Week 2 Review

You’re Not Alone

Praise God. We had an excellent class last night. I think we had 11 students; 2 were new.

We began the class by reviewing what we learned last week. We talked about the clip from the movie we watched last week and reminded ourselves that God loves all of us, and not just all of us who were sitting in that room, but ALL of us, regardless of how cool we are, or aren’t; regardless of how weird we are, how ugly we are, or how lonely we are. And, when we face challenges in life, God will never give us more than we can handle.

The discussion started out well. A few people had trouble remembering what we went over last week, but once we started talking, everyone else remembered. It was a great opportunity to fill in the two new people as well.

We prayed for the night.

We watched another clip from the movie, To Save a Life. In this clip we get to hear Roger’s inner monologue and find out what lead him to his suicide. He wrote his thoughts out in a blog post on a social network that Jake, the main character, finds after Roger’s suicide. Roger felt alone. He felt ignored. He felt like he could walk into a crowded room and scream and no one would hear him. He felt as if he kept crying out for help, but no one would listen. He knew he was unhappy. And, the accumulation of all these feelings brought him to a place where he felt that killing himself was the only way to escape.

After the clip I asked the group how they would feel if they were reading the same thing from one of their friends. They replied that they would feel upset, mad at themselves, angry, and guilty. Then I asked them how they would feel if they read the same thing, but their friend was still alive. We all agreed that, much like Johnny in the movie, we would feel like our friend was not serious or that they were doing it for attention. Most of us knew someone who used similar tactics to gain attention, but who were ultimately not realistically considering suicide. We agreed that it was difficult to know how to deal with this kind of thing. We also discussed whether or not Roger did all he could do. After all, his own mother didn’t even know he was hurting and when he went to youth group, he didn’t stay long enough to really give it a chance. To Roger, it must have felt like enough, but he had probably already made up his mind that his only option was suicide. When you have completely isolated yourself from the rest of the world, your options must seem very limited.

The next activity we did was called, Walk Across the River. We all stood on one side of the room and I read various statements that all began with, “Please walk across the river if…”

We had various phrases that ended that sentence. For example,

“Please walk across the river if you are stressed out.”

“Please walk across the river if you’re parent s are divorced.”

The statements go on and on and get more personal each time.

In each case, the people to whom the statement applied would walk across the room. What we were able to determine from this activity, and the subsequent small group conversations, was that we had all, at some point, felt hurt, abandoned, and/or alone. The students, I believe, were very honest in the stories they shared with their groups. The pain that we so often cover up was revealed and we began to show our true selves, not for attention, not for outdoing each other’s stories, not because misery loves company, but for healing.

We also determined that if each of us has felt that pain, then it must be pretty common. In fact, we could probably assume that everyone on the planet has felt a similar pain. And, in most cases, that pain was caused by someone else; another human, a friend, a family member, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a teacher, and so on. So if everyone has been hurt by someone else, then there is only One in whom we can put our full trust. God is the only one who will never let us down, who will always be there for us, who will never stab us in the back, take advantage of us, abuse us, or leave us.

The mood was serious at this point. God was moving, the Holy Spirit was working, and we were all realizing different things about how we have been treated, and how we have treated others. Hopefully, the students were getting this idea of just how much God loves them. Hopefully, they are beginning to understand how much they need Him in their lives.

As this was sinking in we began the message for the week which I have also posted. It is based on the message provide in the series and stems from a talk that the character Chris, in the movie, gave to his youth group regarding peoples’ value and how people value others. In it, I talked about how we assign a worth to the people we meet, and how Jesus teaches us what our true worth is. There was some good discussion that came out of it.

We ended the evening in prayer. Each student found another student whom they may not be well acquainted with and prayed together for God to show them who in their life they need to reach out to, and when God shows them that person, or people, that they will have the courage to be obedient to God’s call and reach out so that God can work through them and His will be done.

Overall, I was very pleased with the evening and look forward to next week’s lesson, Say Something…Do Something.