Day 5: A Time You Thought About Ending Your Own Life...

Whoa-it just got real. This blog challenge seems to run from the mundane to the very, very serious. When I read that title, it was like cold water had just been tossed on me. I could give you the answers that you want to hear--"Oh, I'd never!"--but I made a promise to be honest in what I wrote.

A lot of people don't know that suicide is very personal to me--I lost my step-grandfather and my aunt to it. There is much to both stories that is not for blogging; some things need to remain private, even for me. The bottom line is that both losses were very painful for my family to go through, and are not something we talk about very often. I loved my aunt--she was vibrant and funny, and far too young. I don't understand her reasonings, but anyone could deduce that her heart was hurting. Her loss was particularly devastating to me, especially as I was still a teenager at the time...

I've always looked at suicide as a coward's way out. You kill yourself, you don't have to face the consequences. You don't have to look at your mother's face, you don't have to clean up the mess you've made. You're scott-free, and that's not fair. You've run away from reality--the reality that you are loved, that life is hard, and that it will--it DOES--get better. It does, even when you're in the deepest valley. That sounds really, really cliche, unless it's coming from someone who's looked hell in the face. Well, I have, and if I can say it gets better, then darn it, you have to believe that it does.

I can remember wanting to run into traffic as a small child. I can remember thinking that the world would be better if I wasn't around. I felt like an outcast, even at home, because my personality is so different from most people and family that I knew. I was the result of an unplanned pregnancy, and I never fully realized that my mother DIDN'T regret having me. It took the birth and death of my first child for me to have that conversation with my mom--I spent my entire youth thinking that she'd wished she'd had that abortion. That's pretty brutal, and the enemy had a field day with me. Please don't get me wrong--my mother loves me-she always has. But the smallest things can be used as a weapon, and that wound its way into my psyche like a parasite.

I've never really been afraid to die; my heart problems were initially diagnosed when I was 18 (mild arrhythmia, attributed to stress), and I'm about as accident-prone as they come. I'm more afraid of missing out on something, though, and I think that curiosity/nosiness has kept me from taking my own life on many occasions. Looking back, I've probably struggled with depression since I was 15...the trigger was most likely the death of my grandmother, who was my mostest-favoritest person in the whole, wide world. Her death had a huge impact on my life, as she was the one person who ALWAYS made me feel loved...Grandma Myers was my refuge, and when she died, I was anchor-less, even though I was raised in the church and knew that God was supposed to be my hiding place.

The thoughts to end my own life were (obviously) the hardest to combat after my daughter died. I've never made a serious attempt, although I did have at least one occasion where I pushed the limits. Definitely not my finest point. There is no "set time" when I thought about ending my own life. Truth be told, I think that my personal tendencies in that direction are the strongest when my hormones are out of whack. So, about once a month, I have to fight thoughts of driving my car into a cliff. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. I can recognize it; I know the counter-measures, and I know the consequences. It's not a thought-trail that I allow myself to go down, by the grace of God, but it is an issue that I have to be careful with.

Life is beautiful. It took 3 years after the loss of my daughter, for me to remember how it felt to laugh...for me to come back to  reality as a mother who had lost her child. I spent two years in the deepest valley of despair that you could imagine, and suicidal thoughts were a constant battle. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is more of a battlefield...and death casts a long, long shadow. When the sun finally began to creep out again, it shone on a whole, new world that I'm still getting used to.  Hannah would be turning 7 this October, in the first grade, and probably covering the world in glitter. My son just turned 6 months old....my little guy with his giant, Charlie Brown head and his beautiful green eyes brings me more joy than I ever thought possible. Just seeing his picture on my desk can bring me to tears of happiness. I didn't think I'd ever know such joy again. If I could go back to me as a teenager...as a new mother (with Hannah)...as a devastated woman who had no child to hold, and a broken heart...If I could go back and see myself sitting in that bathtub with my bottle of wine and my bottle of meds, waiting to see which would knock me out first...
If I could go back, and show myself a picture of my beautiful boy...
Or let myself know about the lives that Hannah's story has touched...
Or let myself know that the road is long, but so totally worth taking...
Or let myself know that yes, there is a husband for you, and he is amazing...
Or let myself know that the man I married was the strongest, bravest person I would ever meet, and that he would love me through my darkness...
If I could go back to those times of utter despair, and just let myself know that yes, it's a fact: God is there. He is here. He never lets me go. He will ALWAYS be there, even when your head is bowed, and you can't raise your face to see the sun...
Life becomes beautiful again through our weakness, because it's in His strength that we keep walking. It's in His strength that we finally look up and notice that the clouds have passed, and we can go on...broken, fixed, healed but scarred...we can not only survive our darkness; we can revolutionize the world with our testimonies.
So, minus my monthly hormonal swings and occasional thoughts (and my brief-but-treated round with postpartum depression), it's been a long, long time since I toyed with "what if I did?" But I have, and I think I have to be honest about that. Being a Christian doesn't mean you don't think about it--in fact, I think you just might think about it more, because Heaven sounds so much better than earth. But you can't win people to Christ if you're dead, and that's what we're supposed to do while we're here. We stay. We live, we breathe, we share our testimonies, and we raise the next generation to honor the Lord. Suicide is selfish and cowardly. We're called to be brave and strong, and to seek Him for the resources to do so.

But when you just can't....when you really, truly feel like you can't go on, even in His strength, there is hope. There is help. Just because you're a Christian, doesn't mean that you have to fight alone. And it doesn't mean that sometimes, our chemicals/hormones/neurotransmitters don't get a little messed up! So if you need or are on medication for depression or imbalances, don't think for a second that there's anything wrong with that. If you personally are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please click here:
It's a link to a list of hotlines that are for Broken Believers, and they can help. At my darkest times, I sought counseling from Dr. Mary Jo Schneller at South County Christian Counseling; you can reach her at (314) 729-0481, or online at www.scccchome.com.  There is hope, and there is healing. And life is a wonderful, beautiful gift! :)