Have you ever seen a hurricane sweep in?
I have; at least, I’ve seen the remnants of one sweep in. It’s quite a sight. One moment it seems to be a normal afternoon, with an overcast sky and some wind.
Next moment, the world goes dark.
Life can be that way too.
Everything can be okay, but then the storm comes barreling in.
There’s a variety in the storms. Some of them come with lightning and thunder that shakes the earth. The lightning goes off 100 yards from you, and the “crack!” is something you never forget.
But some storms are more silent. They just turn the world to night and pour down rain endlessly. If you get caught in one of these storms, you can’t help get drenched.
The cold and wet sink right down to the bone.
Regardless of what type of storm life brings along, I find there is a common experience of all who get caught in the storm: we feel alone.
We huddle up somewhere where we feel a little bit sheltered and try to hide. There’s no one else in sight.
This is where most people feel a ‘survival’ instinct kick in.
It’s easy to envision the scenario if you take our storm illustration out to sea. Most people run around trying to save their ship that seems to be sinking in the hurricane winds and rain. They are determined to keep afloat.
But that is not the experience of all of us. For some of us, the prospect of saving our vessel seems to be hopeless. We are convinced that the ship is going to sink, so why try to save it?
In the nautical nightmare, our veins pulse with the message, “Abandon ship!”
They call this instinct to give up on life and choose death being “suicidal.”
When people talk about suicide, their words are often derisive. Those of us who want to choose death over life in the midst of our struggles or nightmares feel like lepers.
And yet, our logic seems so sensible! Everyone around us fears death, but we have come to see it differently. After all, isn’t death release?
I for one have often been much more afraid of living than of dying.
If you are one who looks at your apparently sinking vessel of life and contemplates jumping overboard, you probably feel that you are indeed utterly alone.
You probably also feel cursed. Well, I am here to tell you that you are not alone, and you are not cursed. I know that you are not alone in your struggle with suicide because I have been there, and I have slowly begun to meet other people who have been there too.
There are many of us.
And as to being cursed, no one who has been saved by Jesus is ever cursed. Being cursed means having God turn his face away from you.
That’s what happened to Jesus on the cross: God the Father turned his face away.
Since Jesus bore that curse for us, we will never have to bear it. Instead, God has turned his face toward us, and we are blessed.
Are those not the words that God has instructed to be said over his people: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you…”?
And as to life being impossible, it isn’t.
Here’s some wonderful news: the ship is not going to sink. After all, has God not said of you, his treasured vessel: “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”?
Life may very well seem impossible. But we believe in a God for whom nothing is impossible.
An example of how to live in this storm is actually found in a woman who lived thousands of years ago.
She was about to prepare her last meal for herself and her son in the face of a merciless famine, when a prophet of God asked her to feed him as well. She must’ve thought that the prophet was either unashamedly insensitive or crazy.
But he went on to say to her that if she would just have faith, God would provide enough food for her until the end of the famine.
Day by day, the prophet promised that her supply would be enough.
Amazingly, the woman listened to the prophet. She obeyed God’s word by feeding His prophet, and God kept his promise. Her supplies did not run out until the end of the famine.
Living in the midst of our pain, and in the face of suicide, can seem impossible.
But if we will just listen to our loving God and take life one day at a time, he will give us enough strength one day at a time. It will be hard, but it will be worth it.
I hope that these thoughts can be to you as the sun peeking through the clouds. I hope you feel a little hope arising inside of you. And I hope that you know now that you’re not alone.
By God’s grace, we can face this together.
For further encouragement, please consider reading two works by Dr. Ed Welch: “Shame Interrupted” and “Depression: Looking up from the Stubborn Darkness.”
Thanks for this…I’m kind of in the middle of the storm right now. Not that I’m suicidal or anything, i’m just struggling to get out of the darkness because 1. it seems easier to just stay in sometimes 2. I’m a control freak and have problems trusting God aaaand 3. my faith has never been the most solid thing anyway and I’m trying to figure it out. so yeah….thanks for sharing your story 🙂
Thank you for sharing Julia! I’m a control freak too, so I totally hear you! It can be so hard to accept God’s plans. Praying for you in your storm!
surrender is hard for the control freaks :-/ 😛 I’m working on it…Thanks! Praying for you too
I definitely have these problems too. Especially #3. I’m still trying to figure out my Faith. It is hard.
It’s hard, but I’m coming to see that it’s less about us and more about God. Really, we don’t hold the cards- He does. And I’m still trying to make sense of that, but it helps some to know that we’re really not control of our own lives (because honestly, me being in control of my own life is terrifying and a bad idea). Praying for you!
Interesting discoveries. Thank you for sharing them Julia. It would probably be a bad idea for me to control my own life as well. And thank you for the prayers. I will definitely be praying for you as well.
Great article! As someone who has seriously contemplated suicide I can say with certainty that most people considering it are logical, rational people. They really do not want to die either, but they cannot see another way out and suicide seems to be the last option available. And you are so correct when you say that God’s grace is enough! It may feel like nothing more than a thread but in reality it is the rock that never fails. Depresion and suicide can’t be overcome by a natural man but through God all things are possible!
I agree with you entirely! I’m so thankful for God’s grace.
And by the way, I love the Steelers! 😊
Woohoo! Blitzburgh all the way!!!
I’d up vote you, but you’re a steelers fan.
forget it.
It could be worse, I could be a Browns fan. XD
Ouch, you have wounded me!! The browns DID beat the steelers last year ya know! 😀
Thank you for this article. It is so spot-on and is what I wish someone had said to me when I struggled with this a few years ago. “Living in the midst of our pain, and in the face of suicide, can seem impossible. But if we will just listen to our loving God and take life one day at a time, he will give us enough strength one day at a time. It will be
hard, but it will be worth it.” Love this. If you look at the entire future, it’s overwhelming…but if you look at just the next day, with God it’s manageable. ~Anna
Thank you for sharing Anna. I very much wish someone had pointed me more to God’s daily provision when my struggle was at its height (maybe someone did and I just totally missed it 😊), but I’m so glad to have that truth to cling to now. I find I often have to remind myself every day that ‘as your days, so shall your strength be’. God is good! – Lee
This is so good. Thank you for writing this article. I wish every person who has struggled with suicide and depression would read this. Thank you for giving people hope! God is so good, and as Steelers Fan said, With God all things are possible!
Thank you for the encouragement! Yes, I’m so thankful that NOTHING is impossible for God.
What are the little icons that look like two laptops?
Hmmmm, my devise doesn’t seem to be showing the icons that you mean…
WoW! That was really awsum, May OUR FATHER BLESS you & keep you standin strong to help others, peace my friend.
Dear Evan: I am sorry to bother you at another forum, but I got blocked and you got blocked. Good thing we are friends. 🙂
Did you see what they did in that forum. He said to ask anything Christian. Yep, his soul is evil, he lives in darkness and darkness will be his destiny. Our Lord is the truth. The truth is his word, and the truth indeed sets us free. I am happy the evil ones blocked us…because they know! I feel great about that. Ye shall know them by their fruits is true! They showed their fruits. I may have weirded them out, a bit. I do that from time to time. I have always been in touch with my mental, physical, and spiritual self. I have seen the other side. I looked up L.U.C.I.F.E.R. I studied Electrical Engineering. When you get down to the beyond… of the beyond…beyond that of time, then you know the truth of infinity. You must look up the Fibonacci Code and the Golden rule. Also look up the odds of shoveling just one deck of cards the same way twice. Our DNA is millions upon millions of codes… all like the Fibonacci code that cannot meet the same time frame as Darwin. The universe is the same as our the galaxies… as in the code of impossibilities. Infinity goes forwards and backwards with no end. One to the POWER of infinity was, is, and always will be One. The one is he that says he is, was, and always will be. The other worlds know the truth, but man of evil do not. Even if man tries to destroy this planet, there of the one will not allow it, without saving the last of the innocent.
PS. Never fear, for our Lord was, is, and always will be our refuge. 🙂 Eh?
Thanks Evan!
Your welcome
Oh. My. Gosh. This article is AMAZING!!!!! Once you started out with how one might feel I just totally clicked with it. I was like,”Oh yeah….that is EXACTLY how I feel!”. It is nice to hear it from someone who has actually experienced depression and someone who can actually relate. Sometimes, and most times, it feels like people just don’t get it. And truly, I don’t think they do!
Thank you for your post Lee! It was truly inspiring and amazing and beautiful and everything in between!
-Clare
Thank you Clare! I pray God blesses you in your current journey. I know depression is super hard (anxiety is my personal forte, but I’ve faced plenty of depression too). I personally have found one CD in particular really helpful at such times. It’s called ‘beauty will rise’ by Steven Curtis Chapmen. I feel like he really gets my struggle, and wrestlers withGod’s truth so authentically.
Blessings!
Thank you so much Lee! I will definitely look that CD up! Thank you for the recommendation.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
Thank you!
“But if we will just listen to our loving God and take life one day at a time, he will give us enough strength one day at a time. It will be hard, but it will be worth it. ”
This is such a great reminder! God will never give us more than we can handle. He will give us the strength and the ability to handle whatever comes our way, one day at a time.
Amen! And I’m so in one of those phases of life where I need to remember that! He gives daily strength.
This is so important and full of truth. Thank you, Lee.
Thank you for the encouragement 🙂
This was so good Lee. I have struggled with depression and suicide (and all the things that come with it) the last two years especially. Sometimes I hardly know how I get to that mindset, until suddenly I’m drowning in an emotional ocean of hopelessness. Having moved out on my own a couple of months ago, these tendencies have begun trying to come back.
As a Christian, it’s one of my most dreaded and difficult struggles to overcome – partly because I know heart is deceiving me with lies of worthlessness and God’s displeasure with me.
It’s at these times I HAVE to pour myself into God’s truths. Read the Scriptures – Matthew 6, Philippians 4:6-7, Isaiah 26:3, John 3:16, Psalm 139, Psalm 118, Psalm 23… I have a highlighter color on my Bible app specifically for these bouts of depression. I just read and meditate, and read more, forcing myself to meditate on what God is telling me through His inspired word. My faith in Christ, trust in God’s promises, and joy in my redeemed life are not to be determined by whatever wavering feelings I have, but are to be determined by God’s truth.
I still struggle, but God is so good. He is always working in me, sanctifying me so that I might become more like His precious Son.
Thank you for this article Lee. It is such a beautiful picture of what goes on in a depressed mind, and how hope in Christ changes that. It was a blessing to be reminded that ultimately, it’s God that saves us from our hearts, because we can’t save ourselves – emotionally and spiritually.
Definitely with you! I love all those scriptures. I think the Psalms and the apostle Paul are my favorite!
Amen! 🙂
Do you find you still struggle at times, or that it’s mostly gone? I find it comes in cycles – the transition from fall to winter is always the worst if I’m spending a lot of time inside, but I think it’s partly because I originally started struggling with suicidal this time 2 years ago
Yeah, I definitely still have a significant trigger. My struggle goes back about seven years, so thankfully I think the worst is past (Lord willing). My real trigger was health related. I developed bad chronic pain and limitations, and at that point I made suicide my ‘plan x’. After years of being kept alive by grace and then convicted of how my holding on to suicide was the ultimate sign of my personal unwillingness to trust God, I found myself finally wanting to turn my back on suicide. Now pain is still a trigger, but I find that I’m not chasing suicidal feelings; rather, they are haunting me. For me personally that has marked a huge change. Now when my pain is really bad my plan x is to just go to a hospital (which seems like a good idea :)). My prayer would certainly be that one day I never have any suicidal feelings. But even if that day never fully comes, I expect the struggle will continue to get easier…and even if it doesn’t, God has shown He is capable of getting me through it.
That’s my personal experience; I hope it helps. I’m sure everyone’s experience is unique. I understand what you describe as your experience, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you for sharing.
Wow, that would be really hard. I’ll keep you in prayer – I know how difficult it is to deal with the overwhelming feelings.
I personally don’t know that I’ll ever completely get over it all, but I do know that God is all I need 🙂
Look up Tenth Avenue North’s “I Need You, I Love You, I Want You”, and Casting Crowns’ “Just Be Held” – such a great songs. I love their music!
Thanks for the prayers and the music recommendations! Those songs are great!
Praying God blesses you!
You welcome, and thank you! Praying God’s blessings for you as well!
Wow, Lee, whoever you really are, this is an amazing article. I wish I’d read something like this a few years ago. Thank you for sharing these thoughts–a whole lot of people struggle with this stuff lately!
It does seem to be a prevalent struggle. I’ve been impressed by how we Christians are given such a unique hope in the midst of such sorrow. Who knows? Maybe speaking hope into such struggles will be a new opportunity for us to show God’s love…love which I so desperately need myself!
Thanks for your encouragement! Blessings!
Yes, it is amazing how we can find hope in Jesus! We need to keep talking to people about Him so they can find hope too!
Thanks Sam. I’m glad it was timely. I’ve cried countless times over these things myself. So thankful God cares about even our hardest challenges!