Why I Didn’t Commit Suicide

Home from work, I closed my bedroom door and crawled into bed. It was 4 p.m. I told myself I was tired. But really, bed was just the safest place to be. An escape from reality. I knew there was an even better escape. A sure way to guarantee I’d never have to deal with life again.

* * *

A coworker commented that suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15-24. A tragic statistic, but it felt far removed from my life. Then the next day my 22-year-old friend texted me that she was having suicidal thoughts. All of a sudden, it wasn’t a statistic. It was my reality. I decided to share my story in hopes it can help someone else.

Five years ago, life fell apart. I was living with my parents, working a part-time retail job while raising funds to be a full-time missionary across the world. While raising money, a hope of a dating relationship fell apart. Devastated, I threw all energy into my plans to move to Nepal. Then red flags came up with the missionaries, and I knew the wisest choice was to cancel my plans to move.  By that summer, all my hopes had disappeared. I was a college graduate working a part-time retail job, living with my parents, with zero plans for the future. Not exactly my game plan for success.

At the same time, because I had been planning on leaving America, I hadn’t bothered finding a church or making friends after graduation. I was alone.

That’s when I started coming home from work everyday and retreating to bed. I didn’t want to deal with life.  Lying there, I thought about how good it would be to just end my life. I was a Christian, so I knew I wouldn’t actually go through with it, but I could understand why people did.

I had a list of expectations for myself, things like Have a plan, Get a real job, Don’t disappoint people, and Don’t move back in with your parents after college As a Christian, I thought following Jesus meant adding to the list, Glorify God, Share the gospel, Don’t waste your life, and Love people.  I had this mental list to check off before I could be okay with myself.

Breathe
As I lay there in bed day after day, I started just having this sense that God was proud of me. I can’t explain it. It was as if God grabbed my endless to-do list, crumpled it up, and replaced it with the word breathe.

That was God’s first action he gave us. Genesis chapter 2 tells the story of how God made the very first person: “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” (v.7).

God breathed breath into us, and humanity has been breathing ever since. Every person submits to God’s will for their life just by being alive. God’s will for you is to keep breathing. Our first and foremost way to love God back is just to keep breathing.

All the to-do lists, all the boxes to check off—those are not God. God is so proud of you just for existing.

I hadn’t accomplished anything. I felt like a failure. But I felt God saying he was proud of me for getting up that morning.

It was like he was saying, “I saw how hard it was for you to get up today. And that’s enough of an accomplishment. I am so proud of you for choosing life.” Over and over, day after day: “I am so proud of you.”

Every time I breathe, God thinks, “That’s my girl. I am so proud of her.”*

A New Way to Do Life
So that’s what kept me getting up in the morning. But how did I move back to healthy? Years of counseling and therapy. It’s still a journey, but here are a few things that have gotten me out of the pit:

1) I told people how I was feeling. Just two people–my coach for fundraising and my old boss from work. They were both kind women I felt safe with. They both encouraged me to go to counseling. Now, I had already had a terrible experience with counseling in college, so I really didn’t want to. But both women recommended counselors they loved, so I called one of them and scheduled an appointment.

2) I went to counseling. This new counselor was different. First session, he sat me down and told me to pull out my notebook and pen to take notes. He explained about attachments and how they can be formed or broken. From birth, every person needs to be taken care of. An infant cries and reaches out its arms by instinct. If someone is there to answer that cry and pick up the baby, that forms an attachment. The baby learns, Someone is here to care for me. We grow up, but we never stop asking the same question: “When I cry and reach out, will you be there for me?” Unfortunately, many people in life teach us that the answer is no. Somewhere along life, I had learned, “The world doesn’t want your tears. Deal with it by yourself.” In counseling, I had to learn what I should have learned as a toddler—if you reach out, the world will reach back.

2) Times of pain and gain. People are knit together in times of pain and times of gain. When you’re sad, you need people. When someone is there for you, you connect to that person, and the world becomes a safe place. That’s why we have funerals. We need people in grief.

The same works for happy. When you’re happy, you need people. When someone shares your joy, you connect to that person, and the world becomes a safe place. That’s why we have weddings and baby showers and graduations. Whatever emotion we experience, we need people there to experience it with us.

I didn’t know what grief was. I didn’t know that all my feelings were good and healthy. I thought something was wrong with me. But it’s good to grieve loss. It’s necessary.

So my counselor gave me an assignment: Pick a person, and every time you’re feeling sad, call that person. I did it, and reaching out changed my life. Somehow I felt better, just talking to a person about what was going on. And you know what? That person became my best friend, and then she started calling me too when she was sad. Five years later, we’re still going to each other, and our friendship is one of my favorite parts of life.

If you are thinking about suicide, please, please tell someone. Find someone who cares, and go to that person. If the first person you tell doesn’t care, find someone else. Go to counseling. Call a friend every time you’re sad. Get help. None of us can handle life alone, and neither can you.  It’s worth it to learn a different way of doing life.

And above all else, breathe. 

_______________________________

*God loves us, but sin is also real. I know God is proud of me because I know that Jesus’ death covers all my sin. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” As soon as I trust Jesus, all my sins are forgiven and God adopts me as his child. As his child, I can have complete confidence that he is proud of me.