Author: Alissa
This is a story about an actual experience of mine. I have changed the names to protect people’s privacy, but the story is true. It was more than a coincidence – it was a God-incidence.
I was up late one night while in the hospital, and I was talking to Megan, one of the staff, about suicide. I was feeling very suicidal at the time. Anyway, Megan was telling me she had a half-brother who killed himself, and it had affected her deeply. She then proceeded to tell me a philosophy of hers: She believed that each person’s life was deeply important to someone. She used a chair as an analogy: “See that chair over there?” Megan said. “Well, that chair make not make a difference to you or me, neither of us may care about it, but I believe that it DOES make a difference to someone. Someone would miss that chair if it were gone.” I quickly dismissed this analogy as ridiculous, and went off to bed.
The next day, management came upstairs with new chairs. As they were removing the old chairs, Lindsey pointed to the EXACT SAME CHAIR and cried out, “NO, you can’t take that chair, that’s Freddy!!” Although she was just being silly, Lindsey’s statement really struck me. It was as if God was telling me, “See, the chair DID matter to someone. And so do you.” Remember, “you may not mean something to the world, but you mean the world to someone!”
Yes, we never know how much. When I was thirteen my father had a major stroke and almost died. He has always suffered from mental illness and had few people in his life that he is close with. My parents were divorced and we were living in another state when I got the news from my grandfather by phone. I ran out of the house and down the street and cried all night. Later he said hearing my reaction really gave him strength to pull throw.