Yes those were the words that I found myself saying over and over before I surrendered to the Lord all of my past and all of my pain. I don’t want to live anymore! That was the cry of my deeply wounded soul. It was such a pain filled thought and yet it was at the forefront of my mind every day. I was a believer in Jesus Christ, I knew I was saved and I knew that God held my life in His hands. Many times I would write in my journals, if I wasn’t so afraid of going to hell I would kill myself.
This was never a thought that I would share with anyone. After all when you are in the depths of despair you really have trouble reaching out to someone with this type of thought. What will they say? What will they think? How will they react? Will they call the police on me? Will they commit me to a psychiatric ward somewhere? How do you tell someone that you are in so much pain that you just want to die?
I remember the time that I drove up to the train tracks and sat right there in the middle waiting for the train to arrive. Tears poured out of my eyes as I screamed at the top of my lungs “I don’t want to live anymore”. Honestly I firmly believe it was the Presence of God that filled my car that night and moved me to drive away from those tracks. I remember driving to a friend’s house after that and just sitting in front of her house. She didn’t know I was there and I never made it to her front door. How could I tell her what I was planning to do? What would she do? The last thing I needed was a lecture. I didn’t need her to tell me what the Bible said or anything like that but I was desperate to just find someone who would hold me and say “it’s going to be ok”.
The next day I saw her at the church lunch and told her what I had done. She hugged me and asked if she could gather a few people to pray for me. Yes of course. I can’t recall if it was three or four people but each of them loved on me and prayed over me. I am so thankful for that moment in time over 8 years and I will never forget it. It was a beginning for me so to speak. It put a desire in my heart to be like those precious non-judgmental people who just loved God and loved people.
This subject comes up because a couple days ago a woman jumped in front of a train in my town. It caused me to pause and wonder what happened? What was going on in this woman’s life that would cause her to jump in front of a train? It grieves my heart each time I hear that someone has taken their own life. I grieves me because I know that I’ve been there. I’ve been at the place where I could not see anything good in my life. I couldn’t see anything to live for because my pain was so devastating and I could no longer handle it.
As a Christ follower I know that this is a subject that is kept pretty quiet in the church. It’s not something people talk about very often. It’s a difficult topic but the truth of the matter is we need to talk about it. We need to know what to do when someone in our midst is hurting so bad that they just want to check out of this world.
Save.org states that suicide takes the lives of nearly 40,000 Americans every year. That’s 109 people every day. That’s 4 people every hour. In the time that it has taken me to write this blog 2 people have taken their own lives. That should cause us to weep.
I have experienced two sides of people trying to help within the church. I have encountered times when I was so deep in the pit of the miry clay that I couldn’t see any possible solutions to my pain. I couldn’t even see God because I was convinced that He didn’t love me anymore. On the one hand I had a very well-meaning sister in Christ push me overboard by sharing scriptures at me and trying to re-assure me that God still loved me. I asked her to just leave me alone but she persisted and I found myself parked at the corner of a busy intersection in the parking lot of Walgreens just weeping. I stopped there because I just wasn’t convinced that my foot would not go along with what my head was thinking. I wanted to just put the pedal to the floor and slam my car into a brick wall. Right there in the midst of that horrible moment in my life I believe God sent the right person to talk to me. However, I couldn’t even talk to her at that moment. She respected my wishes when I said I didn’t want to talk and we hung up the phone. I didn’t tell her that I was sitting contemplating my death or anything like that. But I know that I know that I know when she hung up she prayed for me. I know that because soon I felt a peace come over me and I was able to drive home.
How can we help someone who has come to the end of their rope? How can we be sensitive to the needs of others who are in so much pain that all they want to do is die? I don’t have the answers. All I know is that we need to pray and cry out to the living God on behalf of these loved ones and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to those deep wounds. We cannot heal them, we cannot change a thing in their lives. We have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s prompting of whether we should call in authorities or just allow God to work on their hearts. It’s such a sensitive subject and I only know what I have experienced in my own life. I have a close friend who has always shown me a great example of what to do when you just don’t know how to help someone. She prays and she listens to the Holy Spirit and if He says don’t press she leaves me alone and if He says go forth and speak she speaks the truth in love to me. We all can learn from her example.
I praise God today that He preserved my life. He kept me from following through on the plans I had to end my life each and every time. I know that many times it was the enemy attacking me and other times it was just my flesh feeling tormented and desperate. Each time the Lord saved me from those thoughts and kept me alive. He has a purpose for my life and he has a purpose for your life too.
Today if you feel that you are at the end of your rope and cannot see beyond the miry clay, be patient and look to Jesus. Seek help from professionals if needed and don’t be embarrassed to talk about it with your Pastor. I don’t know all the answers but I know that Christ has all the answers.
If you need prayer, I would love to pray for you, please send me a prayer request on my prayer request page.
Psalm 40:1-2
I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
And established my steps.
Beyond The Miry Clay Ministries 