I want to talk about something….most of the time we find it a difficult thing to speak of but I have a story and I need to tell it.   I think maybe someone needs to hear it.

I went to the funeral of a 17 year old girl yesterday.  She was my youngest daughters age and I don’t really have words to articulate what that was like.  She had taken her own life because of the unending pain that she was enduring.  But that is not her story.  How she died was not who she was.  How she lived was who she was.  Cait was love.  And because of her story, I want to tell you my story.  Someone needs hope.  Someone needs to know that the crushing weight does not have to be WHO YOU ARE.  It can be WHERE YOU CAME FROM.  It can be part of YOUR STORY that gives someone else HOPE.  The hope they need to keep putting one foot in front of the other to find victory.

Twelve and a half years ago I tried to kill myself.

I went into my bathroom and took a bottle of pills and prayed I would never wake up.

I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I couldn’t feel the pain without relief anymore.

I just wanted out.

I wanted peace.

I wanted to be with Jesus.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone.  I was just consumed and crushed by the weight.  The weight of my life that was not how I had planned.  The weight of the hurts that had burrowed into my sensitive spirit.  The weight of dreams and ideas I had for my future that I knew were never going to happen because of my own choices.  The weight of the lie that I was a bad mom and a horrible wife.  The weight of depression that had planted it’s dark seed in my family way before I was ever born.

It was crushing me and I didn’t know how to claw my way up to the light.

So I took the pills.

And it started a tidal wave.

A tidal wave of love that I had never seen or felt before.

There was a friend.

She sat with me in the hospital.

Charcoal.

Stomach pumped.

Ugly.

Dirty.

Ashamed.

She never left.  She stayed and refused to be rejected by my silence.  She fought for me without my even noticing.  I wouldn’t look at her.  I was so ashamed.  Humiliated.  Embarrassed.  She loved me anyway.  She showed me Jesus and made me question the lies I had been believing…and she didn’t have to do a thing but be there.  She just chose to be there. With me.  Like Jesus.

My act of desperation sent me on a quest to find out who Jesus really was.  I had grown up with Him but I had never truly known Him.  I found Him.  He healed me and has changed my life.  I cannot say that I have never struggled since then but I know how He feels about me no matter what.  I know there is always a way through no matter how I may feel.  He is so personal and He has picked me up and carried me through more storms than I ever imagined I would endure.  He has also shown me myself.  His kindness, even in His correction has opened me.  It makes me want to let Him change the not so good parts of myself.  It makes me crave a life lived in love and kindness, compassion and mercy.

Here is what I know.  God tells the truth.  I believe that in my very core.  He says that He knows our days, beginning and end.  And if God tells the truth, and He says He knows our days, then don’t you think that no matter the cause, we will go to be with Him on the day He has ordained?  Maybe that is another Pandora’s Box that I am opening but I also know that God is bigger than suicide.  I am already seeing that with Cait’s family.  I have seen it in my own life.  And all I know is that GOD WINS.  It may really be horrible and devastating for awhile but if we allow Him to, He can work absolutely everything for good.  I have experienced it myself and I am living it again in this season that I am in.

My intention here is to show you that there is hope.  Hope in the crushing weight.  Hope in the heartache.  Hope in the devastation of lost hopes, dreams and expectations.  Hope in the unkind words.  Hope in the loss of innocence.  God IS that hope.  He is love.  And GOD ALWAYS WINS.  ALWAYS.