Personal stories chosen by label -
Suicidal
The people who wrote the following stories selected this label as the best match for how they felt through this time of their life.
One more try
By Pete
Categories: Same track, Brown, Posture 10,Suicidal
I didn’t really do very well at school, never really quite got it. After leaving school and trying a few things I became driven to demonstrate that I was a clever guy and equal anybody else. Coming through Sunday school over the years I had developed this belief that we all have a special purpose, a special work that we need to discover and get busy with. I saw this work as existing out there in the world, like a conquest or mission.
I spent the next fifteen years of my life trying to get a message from God about what the project was and then make it happen. I commenced lots of projects, bought equipment, gathered people together, sold ideas, committed time, learnt skills, visualised outcomes and wrote lists. When I hit my mid-thirties I still felt like a late adolescent still searching for the perfect project and ultimate satisfaction from what I was to put my focus into. I was exhausted, disinterested and depressed.
When I was in my twenties my personal projects seemed to have about a two year life cycle of me becoming interested, applying all my focus and all my resources then collapsing exhausted with a bag of positive and negative experiences.
In my mid-thirties something changed, I would still have ideas and fantasies about what project I was being directed to embark upon but the life cycle became shorter and shorter and few missions ever began. The life cycle shrank from two years to about two days. I became honest, I realised that I didn’t want these projects; I didn’t want the bag of mixed experiences or even the imagined rewards from the project. I recognised my own ridiculousness; my entire belief about how a man of faith engaged in the world and applied his mind and opportunities was incorrect. My approach was subconsciously designed to make me feel safe, important and useful.
As I sat lost, fending off depression with my tattered Bible and knees sore from the same prayers I challenged myself with some ‘what if’ questions. I knew that God loved me and wanted to bless me, I knew that God saw me as beautiful and valuable. I couldn’t see how these pieces of knowledge were to be felt in my heart. I felt empty, tired, sad and purposeless.
Luke 12 - God Knows and Cares
24 "Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds!
31 "But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
So I challenged myself, let’s say that I had the thought that I would rather be dead, then holding that thought, what if I chose to live and do it differently, only do those things that give you joy? Only pursue those things that give you the feeling that God is feeding and clothing you and that God designed you for a special purpose. I challenged myself one step further, if I choose to believe that I am valuable and that God is providing for me, then I should imagine that each day all money, food, transport, clothes are provided. I tried to completely get the feeling that everything is provided, that all creation is complete, there is nothing to be done, I am enough.
With that feeling in place I asked myself, now valuable person, make a choice to be here on God’s physical earth and get a sense of what things you are going to do to fill in your time, don’t think of good works or righteous pursuits but think of what is coming from your heart. What has God laid in my heart from before I was born, what am I passionate about, what do I never tire from, what excites me and energises me, what connects me to others.
I realised that these fragile things that came up were my talents, my precious gifts. Just like the birds and the flowers, God was simply asking me to be the flower or bird that he had created me to be, to embody the beautiful simplicity of His design.
The things I realised about myself through this visualisation felt so right and filled me with joy. But living this reality feels so strange after so many years of creating my own strict religion for me, a religion of fear and negative self talk. As I talk with God I am reassured that He wants me to focus and discipline myself around those things that flow from my heart when I am filled with Him. Each day with full belief I say, ‘thank you for my daily bread’, thank you for providing all I need today to be all that I am. Thank you that I no longer have to live a life that I hated, thank you for asking me to simply be me. Every day I aim to be all of me.
Mark 12 -
God of the living
26 ... 'I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, and the God of Jacob'?
27 "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken."
I do not yet fully understand this verse, but the line, He is not the God of the dead, but of the living stands out to me at the moment and it seems that there is something I need to understand about being alive. I am going to give it one more try and I am simply going to be all those things that God has created me to be passionate about and that will be my beautiful project for God.