Finding a Voice in the Silence
“Finding a Voice in the Silence: Lamentations and the Reality of Suicide”
Posted by Chaplain Chad Czischke
Amid a busy, chaotic schedule, I will admit that I utilized online help to reorganize my thoughts on this topic. Unfortunately, I have dealt with this too much over the past 6 weeks. Thankfully, none of the Soldiers I have worked with carried out their thoughts, and to date, all Soldiers found additional help. Yet, my mind is racing as to why this continues to be a topic for concern. A topic that I have encountered throughout my career, and sadly at times, stood over the graves of Soldiers that carried out their suicidal thoughts. As a result, I began to write and realized how distorted and unorganized my words were. Therefore, I sought other resources, and this was the result of my thoughts combined with the additional help:
There are moments in ministry when words seem to collapse under the weight of suffering, when the grief is too deep, the despair too real. When someone dies by suicide, we are left standing among fragments of sorrow, questions, and silence. The Book of Lamentations invites us into that silence and gives it sacred shape.
Lamentations is not a book of easy answers. It is a book of honest pain. Jerusalem lies in ruins; the writer walks through desolation and dares to name it. “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is” (Lamentations 3:17). These words echo the cry of many who experience suicidal despair, a sense of disconnection, of being unseen and beyond redemption.
As chaplains, we are often invited into that sacred, fearful space where hope seems absent. The temptation is to rush in with reassurance, to fill the silence with words of comfort. But Lamentations teaches us another way; to stay. To bear witness. To let lament be a language of love. In the ashes of the city, the poet doesn’t preach solutions; he names suffering with brutal honesty. That act itself is a form of faith, trusting that God can hold the truth of our pain.
Yet even amid the ruins, a whisper rises: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (3:21–22). Hope in Lamentations is not triumphant; it’s fragile, flickering, it’s the kind of hope that coexists with tears. It’s the reminder that even when we cannot feel God, God is not absent.
When we stand beside someone wrestling with thoughts of suicide, or when we comfort those left behind, our ministry mirrors the rhythm of Lamentations: lament and hope intertwined. We do not deny the darkness, but we also do not surrender to it. We hold space for both grief and grace.
In clinical pastoral practice, this means creating a safe place for lament — for honest conversation about despair without judgment or fear. It means recognizing the courage it takes to name suicidal pain and responding not with quick fixes but with steady presence.
Lamentations gives permission for holy sorrow. It tells us that crying out is not faithlessness but faith itself. And perhaps that is where pastoral care begins, in the shared silence where we, too, cry out, trusting that God’s mercy can reach even into the depths of despair.
When I sit with the grieving or the hopeless, I remember the poet who walked among ruins and still dared to hope. And I whisper, not as a conclusion but as a prayer: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.”
