Don't Do It...Call for Help!

Less than two weeks ago I was driving home around 8 PM from my counseling job when I got stuck in traffic. I was taking my regular journey through downtown Dallas; however, at this time of night, traffic issues had never really been a problem before. As we crept along I found myself scanning the horizon ahead looking for the source of our stalling. I couldn't see a wreck. What could it possibly be?

Several minutes into the delay the situation began to pan-out before me. What I saw up-ahead was an exit ramp coming off the interstate I was on, which had been blocked off. It was just beyond that police line that I noticed an interstate bridge towering over that exit ramp which had several police cars with lights flashing up on it and then several police officers standing on the bridge, outside their cars. It was then that I glanced to the right of them and noticed about 20 or 30 feet away a dark looking shadow was on the edge of the bridge. As I continued to roll ever so closer in our crawling traffic situation, the dark shadow was revealed. It was a man who was sitting over the bridge edge and preparing to jump. It was all making sense to me now...that interstate bridge and the interstate exit ramps below had all been cleared to handle the situation of a potential suicide jump.

Thankfully, I didn't witness the individual jump; and I am uncertain about what ended up happening in the situation, as I ended up moving past the scene as traffic continued to crawl along.

Did the man jump? And if so, did he survive? Were the police able to convince the man that suicide was a permanent form of relief for the pain he was obviously suffering at the time; rather than a temporary relief?

I don't know what became of the situation, but I do know we all can find ourselves in situations where we want a sense of relief. It's at those points where we need one another the most. And it's when we do find ourselves in those situations and we commonly feel as if we don't have anyone to turn to, that we need resources like 1(800)SUICIDE.

It's been within the past month that I had a client share with me how they turned to a crisis hotline for someone to talk to when they were having a rough time. These options are life savers -- literally.

Let's help in whatever ways we can...



http://www.hopeline.com/

One year ago today I lost a close friend in a murder-suicide. Her husband shot and killed her, and then killed himself. These sort of things can and need to be prevented. Let's reach out and help one another. Let's give hope!

Energy Saving Light Bulbs

Ted Poe is a representative from the Houston, Texas area who is serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. I've known of him for a good few years because he graduate from my alma mater, ACU, and I actually had a class with his daughter while I was there. Mr. Poe is known for his creative ways to teach criminals lessons, as he spent many years as a judge in the Houston area prior to his time in Congress. From what I gather, he is a pretty witty individual.

Here's you a taste of Mr. Poe. I think you'll agree with me, in that he has very creative ways to get his points across! =)

Craziness

The first thing I do basicaly every morning when I get up (even if I'm waking up late) is check the internet. Email comes first, then I check some other things (i.e. it's fantasy baseball season, so that, and then I might check some social networking pages of mine, or my site that has me subscribed to all my blogs that I read, etc.). But one thing that check almost 100% of the mornings (along with my email) is MSNBC.com. It's my favorite news website. I want to know first thing in the morning if there is something "big" going on, or if someone "big" has passed away during the night (Note: is it just me, or does it seem like we're in the midst of another of those phases where there seems to be a lot of "famous" people passing away all around the same time?!). So this morning when I checked, this was the first big picture that popped up on the homepage and let me just say, I think it's a rather scary picture....

That's it. I just wanted to share that picture because when I saw it a couple minutes ago, I just couldn't get over how disturbing it was for a non-gory picture.