I Wanted To Die
It’s true. I wanted to die.
I didn’t really want to commit suicide. That was only a passing thought that I believe the devil was starting to plant inside of me. What got me through those times of lowly thoughts was thinking about how my mother would react and how it would affect her. Even now, it brings me to tears just thinking about it. I think about my brothers speaking at my funeral—what would they say? "He was a great audio engineer"? "He loved his nieces and nephews"? "He had potential"? I was buried in my thoughts. Now that I think about it, I don’t know how many of those thoughts were truly mine and how many were just the enemy twisting and blinding me from what God intended for me.
I believe that the Lord speaks to me in pictures. I often think about the future—what I want my family to be, where I want to be financially, and the person I want to become. In my lowest moments, those visions from the Lord turned into spam from the enemy. It was like the gullible Sam taking a call from a “Microsoft” help desk trying to “fix” my computer. I would get visions of myself as a bad uncle, being the joke of my family. I literally heard conversations between my nieces about me behind my back—how Uncle Sam “just moved back in with Lollie and Pop again!”—and they would just giggle. All I saw for the future during those crushing times was singleness, failure, and suicide. I saw myself hanging from my ceiling fan, wondering what purpose it would serve—other than to put everyone out of the misery of being around me.
The enemy is a much greater threat to Christians than we often acknowledge. You are not invincible.
I’ve walked through depression several times in my life, each time worse than the last. It started with just feeling down, not happy. Then it got to the point where I didn’t even get out of bed. Not to eat, not even to go to the bathroom. I was hiding from the world and from my roommate. I didn’t want the shame of looking into someone else’s face in the state I was in. I would literally pee in a cup in my room because I didn’t have the courage to walk three feet to the restroom. The slight possibility that he would care enough to talk to me about it frightened me. This went on for months. My sheets turned green from the grits and grime of not showering all week. My bed bore the imprint of my body, and my body print was stained into the memory foam. It was a hell that I felt "stuck" in. Most of the time, I didn’t want to get out of it. I didn’t want to get better. All I saw were my failures—my debt, my relational tensions, my failures with what I believed God had assigned me. I believed that I was so far out of God’s will that He could strike me down at any time, simply out of uselessness.
I asked for it.
I longed to be taken away from the fortress that I had built around me.
I longed to be taken away from the fortress I had built around me.
Some of you may be wondering: I reached out; you said you were good! I probably received a text from one of you asking how I was doing. I tried to play it off as best as I could. But if you know me at all, you know I don’t fake very well. I wear my feelings on my sleeve. If you asked how I was doing, I’d say I was “hanging in there.” But truthfully, I was drowning, and I couldn’t or didn’t want to be helped. Drowning in my own failures and shortcomings, coming up for air only to choke on more tension and wrongdoings.
So what do you do with someone in this place?
All you can really do is be there for them. Whether that’s helping out practically where you can or just letting them vent about what’s drowning their soul. There needs to be a shift to get someone out of a situation like this. It could be a Holy Spirit interaction, something as simple as getting something done to fight against the constant negativity in the mind, or hanging out with old friends. Everyone is different. But I believe that God had a plan for me. Every time.
Why does God allow us to go through these situations, whether self-inflicted or not? I can’t answer that definitively. But the cool thing is that He uses these crushing, grinding moments to rebuild us. And He does it again and again. There are many examples of this throughout the Bible. I recently watched a conversation between T.D. Jakes and Steven Furtick, where they discussed how God allows us to go through tough and crushing moments to become the tools He wants us to be for the Kingdom. I’ll leave a link to that talk below; it is well worth your time.
At the end of the day, I wanted to write this because I felt the Lord wanted me to share my story. Don’t get it twisted—I am far from perfect. FAR FROM IT. I want you to know that we are all walking through things. I’ve learned that people are really good at hiding their true struggles and feelings, especially Christians!
If you are struggling with something like this, talk to someone. Don’t believe the lie that you will trouble them. People care more about you than you think. The enemy likes to put a veil over you—a veil that was torn at the resurrection. It’s just smoke and mirrors. The enemy makes it look real. He is smarter than you think, and you are far more vulnerable than you realize. If you believe the enemy can’t touch you, remember that pride comes before the fall—and you’ll fall hard. But God will always be there with you, even when He feels far away. Even when you lose faith in Him completely, as I did for a season, He is the potter at the wheel, slowly crafting you. If there is a tear or an inconsistency, He is there for you in the chaos of that crushing place and in the reconstruction, for His glory.