If you have ever struggled with suicidal thoughts, this blog is for you.
If you know someone who is struggling with suicidal thoughts, this blog is for them.
If you need to be reminded of how much God loves you, this blog is for you.
If you know someone who needs to be reminded of how much God loves them, this blog is for them.
You are not alone.
It gets better.
It’s going to get better.
God’s got this.
You matter.
You’re important.
Please tell someone.
I came home on November 24, 2019 a little less than 2 months ago from an 11 mission trip to 11+ different countries. It was so hard. I have struggled with depression and anxiety most of my teenage and early adult life. But I have never struggled with the level of anxiety I did until I got home. I have never had the experience with God like I did until I went on the 11 month journey. I never felt more alive than I did when I was serving people ALL over the world. I learned that the people I served didn’t need me, but I needed them. I felt like that was my absolute purpose. Like I had something worth living for.
When I got home, the worthlessness I felt in my soul hit me like a tidal wave coming over home and sweeping it away into the abyss of the sea to never return again. I have never felt the weight of the hopelessness I was feeling and didn’t really know how great it was until these past few days. I spent 11 months with deep intimate community with 40+ people, we experienced trials, triumphs, miracles of the Lord’s provision in our fundraising, we laughed, cried, fought, reconciled, and bonded all while serving the Lord every day. It was hard but it was the best community I had ever been apart of because I had no choice but to trust these people and love them. So I chose into them and in return received a glimpse of the Fathers heart. To wake up one day after that and they’re gone… you feel like you literally broke up with 40+ people at once. All while trying to fit back into a place where you don’t feel like you belong. Yet the uncomfortable situations I was put in this year felt more comfortable and familiar than my hometown I grew up in. Everything is easy in America. The accessibility, the 100+ options for chips, cereal, toilet paper, Tupperware, pop, everything we need we can get at an arms length. People are asking you questions you’re expected to have the answers to but don’t know how to explain what is going on inside of you. And it just hits you. The thoughts come in like a thief in the night trying to rob you of all your joy.
“What is your purpose?”
“Why are you even here?”
“You did a great thing this year, maybe that was it for you. And this is the end.”
“It’s not going to get better from here.”
“What if you just killed yourself or you just died?”
“Wouldn’t that just be great?”
And they just continue.
I have never had these thoughts until the week before Christmas. I didn’t know what to do. I just felt numb. I wasn’t planning anything but I really felt on a scale of 1-10 a 6-7 feeling of not wanting to live anymore. That this kind of darkness I would feel for a long time. When you don’t know what your purpose is, you feel unworthy, or just lost… it is very easy for these thoughts to come in and steal the truth of WHO YOU ARE AND THE TRUTH THAT TRUMPS IT ALL. WHICH IS JESUS. What I was feeling and experiencing was valid, but I wasn’t meant to live in it forever. I truly believe that.
On Saturday, January 4th God proved his love to me. He rescued me from the thoughts of the enemy.
I went to Gainesville, Georgia where the home base is for the World Race where it all started in October of 2018. For something called Project Searchlight, a time for everyone who launched last year to gather and be sent out into wherever God is calling us to. We had a wonderful leadership team speak on things from dating, resume building, different organizations to partner with, and how to use what God did and what we experienced last year to find out what we are meant to do and how we can execute it.
I met a friend from another Squad, Hunter. At lunch we sat next to each other and began talking about our experience on the race and now at home, and asking each other questions. At one point he looked at me and said, “I just really feel like your mind has this heaviness, can I pray for you?” I said of course. This is just one little way of how God used someone to literally intercede on my behalf of my thoughts and he didn’t even know I had those deep dark thoughts of wanting to die or suicide. ITS GOD YALL.
Later that day, I was sitting in a worship session and before they played God said to me, “Just receive my love.” So I sat there listening to the songs and not really resonating with the playlist. You know how sometimes you go to church and you are worshipping and not feeling it? That was me that night. I was expecting him to come through the words of the songs and he wasn’t. So I said okay God, I trust you’re coming through I’m just waiting.
Little did I know that it was going to be through the message.
Amy, one of the Squad Mentors started sharing how the Lord wanted her to just share a specific story and testimony of how God changed her view of love in her life. All she had to say was that it gets better and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the message she was about to share would be for me.
Here are some of the things she shared…
“There are revelations of God’s love waiting for you in your future.”
“What if everything he’s ever done has been because he’s loves you? Not just your friend, not just the Ethiopian baby, YOU! You need to know that you know that you know that he loves you.”
“Obviously we know he loves us because he died and resurrected but that’s not the end of the story, he also wants us to be resurrected too.” (YES!!!)
“Sometimes you just have to reach out and agree with the truth.”
“If something happens that makes you doubt his love, his love is not worth doubting, you probably can’t see it because it’s too big and your eyes are too closed. His love is massive, never ever doubt his love. Ask him to widen your perspective.”
She went on to share a prophetic dream that she had while visiting a Squad in Thailand about her sister’s wedding day (which had already happened.) When it was time for her sister to walk down the aisle, they couldn’t find her. So Amy went to go look for her and she found her dead on the floor. She woke up from the dream in grief then went back to sleep in the same dream. The second time she went back into the dream, she knelt down on the floor and said come on babe it’s time to get up, it’s time to get married and grabbed her shoulder. She breathed the breath of God and resurrected from the dead. What a powerful dream.
After she went home, she received a message from an unknown number that had a video of her sister strung out on heroin. They didn’t know where she was or if she was dead or alive. The first thing she said was, “You said she’d be resurrected.” Her sister now is 1 year and 2 months sober!!! Praise God!!! She continued to share how she was dead for 3 days and during that time she told someone, “If she’s dead God is not love and he’s a liar.” The friend said, “You don’t believe that.” God was not scared of her pain, he was eager, ready and willing to transform it with his love.
And the same reigns true in my life. If I don’t know that God loves me, nothing matters.
“The key to unlocking glory to glory is learning how to be made high and brought low because all things are possible through Christ who strengthens you. Because glory to glory is not a circumstance, it’s a fundamental truth. And if you can’t see glory to glory in your life, ask the Lord to widen your perspective because you need to see and encounter his love in whatever circumstance you’re in. When your sister is 3 days maybe dead, you need to believe beyond a shadow of doubt that God is love. And God looks like Jesus, and Jesus was a human empowered by the Holy Spirit and you are too.”
“It gets better. Day after day after day. The love builds and it grows, and it gets sturdy and strong enough to pass through deep painful waters and come up the other side. And sometimes you step into the water and the water moves out of your way.”
She continued to share stories of how Gods love after the World Race continued to pursue her. And let me tell you how she instilled hope, faith, and trust that God is with us in the midst of the pain.
I learned through her message that…
God will literally always pursue after you even if you’re not pursuing him. Guys.. I didn’t open my Bible until January 2nd to start my 366 reading plan of the year. (Except for being at church) That means in the amount of time I have been home, I didn’t pursue him in the quietness of the night or morning. AND HE STILL PURSUED AFTER ME. WHY? BECAUSE HE LOVES ME. THAT’S JUST WHO HE IS.
All I need to do is trust and believe that he is good, and if he can tell me to just receive his love.. I better believe he is going to show up.
After the message, I went up to her with tears in my eyes telling her how thankful I was that she was obedient to share what God had laid on her heart. I felt like it was just her and I in the room and how I truly believe I came to Project Searchlight for that specific message.
When I came to Atlanta, Amy was the driver in my shuttle bus from the airport to the home base in Gainesville. I was in the passenger seat and we barley spoke which is not like either of us. But I knew God wasn’t prompting me to have a conversation with her. The entire car ride for an hour and a half the Lord repeatedly told her, “For her, for her, for her.” That message she shared that God laid on her heart to share WAS FOR ME. That’s not just a coincidence!! That is the Power of God using his people to show others how his love pursued and captures our hearts!!!
I am not a perfect Christian. I don’t have all the answers. I am a human who experiences emotions and feelings and thoughts like everyone else. And I am here to say that suicidal thoughts amongst the BIG C Church are REAL. And Christ died on that cross for those thoughts. They do not have a place, the enemy will not win because the battle HAS BEEN WON through the blood of Christ. And I am a living breathing testimony alive here right now to tell you that it gets better. This is not the end. God loves you with an overwhelming amount of love that we can not comprehend. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before. And trust me, I felt loved many times while I was on the field, but it wasn’t until I got home that he literally proved his love to me to be true. If he did it for me, he will do it for you. I’m declaring it over your life that he will complete the work he has started in you, he will provide that debt you’re trying to pay off, he will awaken your family members hearts to know him, like really know him, he will restore and redeem what is broken, he will save your and rescue you from evil schemes of the enemy, he will heal you, he will love you! Because God is LOVE.
Lord God,
I pray right not for everyone reading this, struggling in ANY circumstance that you will meet them where they are at. I pray Lord that you will send people their way to tell them that you LOVE them!! I pray Holy Spirit that you will just invade their heart, the deepest part of their soul and fill it with your peace that surpasses all understanding, love that is indescribable, and joy that is inexplicable. Lord I ask that if anyone is feeling like they don’t have a purpose of living that you would make yourself known to them like never before and they cannot deny it was you. Grab their hand and show them literally every step of the way they should go. Lord I command every evil thought, scheme, lie, and game of the enemy, to leave in Jesus name. Fear gone. Shame gone. Hatred gone. Anxiety gone. Depression gone. Comparison gone. Suicide gone. Addiction gone. Anger gone. Selfishness gone. Hopelessness gone. Greed gone. Unworthiness gone. Comparison gone. It has no place because you are on the throne. Anything not of you needs to go now. In Jesus name. Lord I pray for an encounter of your love like never before, that would radically change their life.
Amen.
