I grew up not believing in God.  I became a follower of Christ at the age of 14 . My life in high school and college was a blessed life of growth as I strove with all my heart to love the Lord and follow his leading in my life. 

In October of 1987, I moved from Iowa to Indianapolis to start a job at Ford Motor Company. Less than two years later, I started to fall into depression. That is where I will pick up the story...

For no apparent reason, I started noticing changes occurring in me- greater stress and anxiety, inability to make firm decisions, inability to plan and sleeplessness. Over the course of a couple of weeks, this got worse and worse. There may have been factors that contributed to this, it's hard to tell: diet, a new environment, lack of exercise, stress at work. At the time, I didn't know what was wrong with me. There wasn't any thing I could pin it on. After a few weeks, it got to the point where I couldn't sleep at all and couldn't accomplish anything at work. Anxiety wracked me and I felt like I was losing it. I went to a counseling session for two nights at the local hospital, at the recommendation of a co-worker who challenged me to hang in there. By that time, I was beyond counseling- I couldn't even keep up with the pace of the conversation. My wife a couple of days later forced me to go to Community North and check in. I felt there was nothing that could help me out. 

I was at Community North for three weeks, during which time I lost all hope and felt totally helpless. A sense of hell came over me and continued with me throughout my entire depression. I had felt that the Spirit of God, who had been so powerful in my life, had abandoned me (He had not, but I was convinced He had). I was given Prozac to correct my depression. The psychiatrist didn't even bother to do investigation into my family history of manic depression. I had never had a manic episode in my life, or depression for that matter. The Prozac didn't fix my depression, but merely gave me enough energy to plot my suicide. At the hospital during group counseling sessions and individual sessions, people tried their best to draw out of me what was wrong with me, but there were no root causes. Meanwhile family members were accusing each other of being the root cause. One family member accused my wife of being the cause- that the marriage was on the rocks (it wasn't) and I was too nice of a guy to ask for a divorce. Members of the church I was in accused my wife of wanting too fancy of a house that we couldn't afford and that the stress was too much for me (I was the one, not my wife, who took the lead in purchasing the house, and we had enough money. It wasn't until after I got in the hospital that my anxiety over the house and my depression led to a great worry over being able to afford it. It wasn't a logical anxiety, but it was there nonetheless- severely depressed people can be so anxious that they fear just about anything.) Before I go in detail about what I consider most important about this time of depression (what actually was occurring in my mind), I'll lay out the rest of the events that occurred:
I was released from the hospital and tried to kill myself. I bought a bottle of 100 capsules of extra strength Tylenol, drove out into the middle of a farmer's field on the way to Greenfield and took all the tablets and waited to die. After several minutes, my stomach started heaving in pain and my head became dizzy. My eyes couldn't see properly and my ears heard unusual sounds. Coward as I was, I wanted to die, but I couldn't take the pain any longer. I crawled out of the car and stumbled back to the road, about a 1/4 mile away and knocked on the door of the only farmhouse in sight. No one was there. I laid down on the step of the door and heard a car coming down the road several minutes later. I stumbled out to stop the car and they called for an ambulance. When I arrived at the hospital, they put ice bags over my whole body and pumped my stomach (some of that was already done in the ambulance). They managed to get hold of my wife and she was there. The doctor told us that I would die by toxic poisoning of the liver within a few days, but I guess God wasn't through with me yet. I managed to survive- yet my insides, what was in my mind, hadn't changed. I was still in the same condition. I was transferred to Winona, since we weren't happy with the treatment at Community North. I was put on a different anti-depressant and it, too didn't work (doesn't anybody pay attention to family history?) After more than a month, the doctor added Lithium, (finally listening to my family) which is used for manic depressives. After 1-2 weeks, all of a sudden I went from depressed to manic, but the doctor didn't recognize it (even though some patients could tell that something wasn't right). I was 'high' for about a week and the doctor released me, assuming I was better. After getting out of the hospital a few days, I fell into depression again and again tried to kill myself- fortunately I never did any research in drugs- I took aspirin, which again, after great pain, I drove to the hospital and had my stomach pumped. Good thing I didn't get into an accident on the way there.

Finally they added Tegretol to the Lithium and Pamelor and eventually they had me stabilized. This time they kept me in the hospital for almost three weeks after being stabilized to make sure I was truly stabilized. I was. I left the hospital and recovered from there- the whole ordeal lasted four months. Before going on, I want to stress what it was that went on in my mind during those black days, that you may understand more clearly what it is to live in darkness- none of this is exaggerated. It is how I actually felt. To be stuck in severe depression has to be the worst feeling of all diseases, for one has nowhere to draw from for strength. Let's say we have cancer. At least we still have our minds- with our minds we can find the strength to persevere, to think positive thoughts, to have comfort in the life to come, to gain comfort in our loved ones. The one with severe depression is robbed of much or all of that. I struggled with:

1) Fear: I was afraid to die and in agony and fear in life as well. I was afraid to go to hell (I had a hard time believing that God still wanted anything to do with me- even though the Bible is clear on those promises, which we will get to in a bit). I was afraid to end up in a mental health institution (a government one) the rest of my life, where doctors would be experimenting on new drugs on me to see what worked and what effect the drugs had on me (this was a fear that was justified- I know someone personally for whom it happened). I was afraid that I would attempt suicide and fail and maim myself (I met some like that in the hospital). Fear to the fullest extent is an awful feeling to have, it is a consuming feeling that never goes away. My stomach was in continual knots. I felt like I was falling all the time, like I had stepped off a cliff that had no bottom. Nighttime was the worst time. If I slept, I'd have a hellish nightmare. If I stayed awake, I'd still feel like I was falling- I'd toss and turn in bed, never comfortable. No thoughts could keep me from this aversion. I tried as I could to think up lustful thoughts or thoughts of food or anything for relief. Nothing was a relief. 

2) Condemnation: I felt condemned. I felt like I deserved the worst and I acted it out with internal anger that all could see. All day long I pulled the hair out from my head, a few strands at a time. I pulled all my eyelashes and eyebrows out. I bit the hair off my hands and forearms. I bit my nails until they became raw. The external pain of doing these things was almost a relief from the internal gnawing pain of condemnation and fear. 

3) Helplessness: I saw no way to help myself. You might say, "But you were in the hospital, right where you could get help." But you are thinking rationally. I was too sick to think rationally. Let me give you an example of how irrational my thinking became: I became convinced that a chain of events, caused by me, could negatively impact the world: 

1. I would kill myself, or get permanently locked up in a state institution.
2. My wife would get depressed and fall apart.
3. This would affect her family, resulting in a chain reaction
4. The same thing in my family.

Does it sound ridiculous? It is. But that was how sick I really was. My wife helped ease these irrational thoughts by proving to me that she hadn't fallen apart. She told me she started working again and showed me that she got an 'A' on a class she was taking. I started to realize that life would go on, with or without me. However, the irrational thoughts regarding my negative impact on my wife and others lead me to other feelings: 

4) Guilt: I felt so badly that I was dragging other people down. It was bad enough to feel my own pain, now I felt guilty for messing up other people's lives. I wished that I had never married, so that I hadn't screwed up my wife's life. It was a great consolation to me to see that not only was she working and succeeding in school, but actually was happy to see me when she visited me. She would kiss me on my mostly bald top of my head and I would push her away, because I felt another feeling:

5) Shame: Shame for what I had become. Shame that somehow I had gotten myself into this whole mess- maybe it was my lack of faith or trust in God (all of these thoughts again are irrational). Shame for how I had treated my body. After a while in the hospital, I stopped shaving and only took a shower every couple of days. Whenever anyone talked to me, my eyes and head were glued to the ground in shame. To look someone in the eyes was kind of like going out from a dark room into a sunny day- it was very uncomfortable and intimidating. (I'm surprised my doctors released me the first time- surely they should have been able to read my non-verbals, even as I was telling them that I was ok).

6) Hopelessness: I was thoroughly convinced that all that was being done for me was for naught. All these pills, all this counseling was a waste of time. The hospital was just a temporary station until the money ran out- then things would really get bad.

Recovery:
As I recovered, the first thing that came back to health was my mind- the helplessness and hopelessness were the first things to improve, replaced with hope and the feeling that there were things I could do to dig myself out of the pit, steep as that pit was. Step by step, I gained confidence. One of the things that was helpful was that us patients were trying to help each other. In helping each other, it boosted our self-esteem and confidence. It was hard to leave the hospital. Though the hospital over the last four months had come to represent terror, now upon getting stable, it had come to represent stability. To go out into the world again was a scary proposition- the last two times I tried, I had failed. It was during these last three weeks in the hospital that the counseling came in handy. Before that, I was getting pretty tired of the psychoanalysis- it didn't do anything to help me and just made me turn inward, to try to escape the burning eyes (or so it felt) of those looking at me. I talked much about the fear of leaving the hospital, of not being able to do my job, of getting depressed again. The talk helped me. It also made the doctors and counselors aware that the time was right for me to leave, unlike when I was manic and 'invincible'.

Fear was the last of the emotions to leave. Going back to work was a concern, but my employer had made steps to ease the transition by putting me into a less stressful job, one that I could conquer, and conquer I did! Though I was concerned with what people would think of me, in general, things worked out better than expected in my work relationships. I put a lot of energy into it and my confidence quickly built, until eventually (about a year or so later) I requested a very challenging job, which I attacked with gusto. Work consumed me and in many ways work was a good confidence builder, but the relationship that I had shared with Jesus in the past wasn't the same- I chose my own path from the time I got depressed to summer of 1999, instead of following Jesus. Oh, I still knew He was who He said He was, I just wasn't yielding my life to Him.

As I gained back my confidence, just after getting out of the hospital, my wife's world unraveled- she had been so strong for those last four months while I was in the hospital, in the midst of lack of support from church and my family, that she just blew a fuse. In talking with my psychiatrist, who she saw for a couple of sessions, I realized that this sort of thing happens all the time for those family members picking up the pieces left being by depression and suicide/suicide attempts. It has been a slower recovery for her in terms of trusting people again- and that trust starts with me. It has been ten years now, and the scars are still there for her wounds, though my scars are all healed.

My Spiritual Awakening
Last summer I had enough of pursuing the things in life that didn't matter. My mind and my body had been healthy for nine years, but I knew what was missing. I remembered back to the days in High School and College when I loved and served Jesus with all my heart. Would God take me back? What would I need to do? I recalled back to those early days of my faith. After becoming a Christian at 14, there were no big changes in my life. I could feel Jesus in me, but I wasn't living the life of a Christian. I didn't know how. One night I got drunk and sick on pot. As I was throwing up in the shower, I prayed a prayer: "Lord, I've screwed up. I just want to do your will- help me to do your will and live for you." The next time I went to the church, I sought out help and found it. I began to do just as I promised. My hunger for the Bible and desire to grow as a Christian became enormous and my life changed before my very eyes. Jesus was living in me, touching me, and helping me to grow closer to him, filling me with his love, peace and joy. I couldn't get enough! "Lord, lead me! Where you want me to go, I will follow, what you want me to do, I will do, what I should avoid, I will avoid. I just want to grow in my love and understanding of you."

Could it be that Jesus once again would hear my prayer, at the age of 35, after all that I have done? Would he again light up my life with his joy? I knew there were things in my life that weren't pleasing to Him. I prayed a similar prayer to the prayer I prayed in that shower at the age of 14 and I was determined to live it! Again a peace came over me and I knew I had an answer to that prayer. I knew that Jesus was always there in my heart, waiting for me to turn and repent and come back to him. The last eight months since that decision have been full of joy! There have been trials, to be sure, but the Lord Jesus is faithful and will deliver me from all of them. There is nothing better in life than to live for Jesus. There is nowhere else to turn for help. Our loving Savior is the only one! We must stop running from him and give him our all, for only in him can we find true peace, true love and true joy! There is nothing that you can do in life, no pit that you can dig that is too deep for our Savior to drag you out of! Call on him today and he will deliver you!

The Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ 
I want to relate God's forgiveness and restoration to the depressed and suicidal person here...

1. We acknowledge that we are sinners, "No one is righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10) We're all in the same boat- before God.  Our sin separates us from God and impedes us from having a relationship with him.  We are completely forgiven of our failure and restored back to God through Jesus' death in our place. There is no difference- the blood of Jesus cleanses all sin, even suicide or attempted suicide! Call on his name! It is a free gift! "For by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9). Thank God that our salvation is by faith alone and there is nothing we have to do to be saved except to repent of our sins and believe! We don't have to meet up to a certain standard, become so good, do so many deeds. No! Jesus meets us right where we are at. He sees the condition of our hearts, that we are sheep without a shepherd, in desperate need and without hope in a cruel world. Whether or not you are one who is in depression right now and don't have Jesus in your heart, it all starts with that step of faith- believing that His sacrifice will pay the price for your sins. You can be cleansed. That step of faith is where Jesus Christ wants to meet you right now!

2. We confess our sin to God, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) He has promised and will deliver us! He will purify us from ALL unrighteousness! No sin is too big that Jesus can't cleanse it! The Apostle Paul, before he became a Christian, was murdering Christians. He went on to become the leader of the church. What a testimony to us that God will forgive us all our sins through the blood of Jesus- even suicide attempts! 

3. Believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins through his death on the cross. "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1) "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

4. Upon doing this, you will receive the Holy Spirit in your heart and will begin a whole new life: "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." (John 3:3) "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:17-18) What comforting verses for all of us, especially those of us who have been through the terror of suicide attempts and depression! We are a new creation in Christ. The Holy Spirit will never leave us! We have been adopted into God's family and become his children! Note that the passages above all relate to our faith, not our actions. When I was in the hospital and had believed that God had abandoned me, He hadn't! He was allowing me to go through that severe trial, possibly so that I could encourage you this day to seek Him with all your heart! If I had succeeded in killing myself, it wouldn't have been the unpardonable sin, for God says, "What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-more than that, who was raised to life-is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship [or depression or suicide!] or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39) I know that this is hard to believe when one is suicidal- I didn't believe it at the time. My psychologist didn't help matters- he told me when I was in the hospital that suicide is the "unforgivable sin". I knew he wasn't a believer. I argued with him (with what little strength I had). Even in the depth of my depression, I still had some hope that Jesus hadn't left me, that if I did kill myself that he would still be with me. I believe it today. These passages clearly indicate, along with others, that once you receive Christ in your heart, He is there to stay, no matter what! Thank God I'm well now and didn't do myself in, but that psychologist was of no help to me in talking like that- maybe he thought that he could prevent me from killing myself through a guilt trip. If so, it just goes to show how little he understood of my condition, even though he saw me several times a week. Instead of his comments helping, they simply fueled further despair. Those of you who have loved ones who know the Savior who are suicidal, don't put this guilt trip on them. Reassure them of the Savior's love and desire to restore them to health, and that Jesus will never leave or forsake them, even though He feels so far away. God is so much greater than our feelings and emotions and no pit is too deep for Him to rescue us out of!

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