All About Life Challenges Sitting looking over grass hill - All About Life Challenges Banner

Suicide Attempts

QUESTION: Why do I keep failing at suicide attempts?

ANSWER:

She had four suicide attempts, and with each try the woman recovered. She was unsure why God allowed her to survive only to face intense pain and loneliness. The journey of addiction and suffering spanned ten years beginning in 1987 and started with that first pill: a prescribed medicine from her doctor.

She was in the middle of a divorce and raising two young children. As if this wasn't enough, the woman dealt with returning to work, surviving on less income, moving from a house to an apartment and ridicule from some people at church. She believed that many of them loved her husband more than her. She felt alienated by friends and depression quickly set in. Taking tranquilizers seemed like a good idea. Before long, she added antidepressants to her list of medicines.

Eventually, her children moved in with their father and she was alone. For three years, she consumed the prescriptions, and then took an out-of-state job where she was introduced to smoking marijuana to calm her nerves. It wasn't long before the prescribed medicines and marijuana brought with them the desire to try other illegal drugs. Her choice: Methamphetamine.

Using drugs was expensive, so she worked two jobs and attended school full time. Exhausted, she would crash for days at a time, only to take more drugs to stay awake. This vicious cycle took its toll, and soon, she stopped caring about anything. She hated life. She often pleaded with God to let her die. The pain, along with irrational thoughts, prompted her to overdose on pills, which landed her in the emergency room. Over the course of the next few years, she would find herself in the emergency room three times for overdosing, and each time, she would talk her way out of being committed to a drug rehabilitation program. Calls to her mother - veiled cries for help - would go unnoticed. Boyfriends came and went; one even beat her so badly, she returned to the hospital, this time for internal injuries.

With 3 suicide attempts behind her and a trip to the hospital for a bleeding spleen, she wanted to get her act together. She earned her degree as a disc jockey, got a job at a radio station, and was proud of her accomplishment. She enjoyed her job, but the drugs consumed her life, privately. One morning, she called a toll-free helpline in order to share her repeated thoughts of committing suicide, only to hang up the phone abruptly. Eighteen months later, she called in sick and was fired that same day.

Even after all of this, she was doing drugs every day. She changed jobs ten times during the next year. For ten years, she saw various doctors and took prescriptions along with the street drugs. In the summer of June 1997 she won $5,000 in a Casino Bingo game and was determined to stop taking drugs; the money was her ticket out of this lifestyle. She went through every cent of the money within 30 days. With this sudden burst of action, her drug dealer couldn't keep her adequately supplied. Panic set in when she realized she was out of cash, had no job and no drugs.

She got in her car, drove out of town, and rented a hotel room with her last bit of money. After writing a goodbye letter to her children, she took a pair of manicure scissors and slit her wrists. She woke up the next morning, angry at herself for still being alive, and called the front desk because she had no one else to call. At the hospital, she spent two weeks in the psychiatric ward and for the next three months, she took only the medicines they prescribed to her.

On Thanksgiving day, that same year, she stepped out on faith and decided to stop taking drugs altogether. Withdrawals, in the form of hallucinations, insomnia, and physical pain, racked her body. She couldn't eat, sleep, or shower; she couldn't even brush her teeth. It was the worse experience of her life, and she told God, "Just let me die, this is unbearable." But by January, with the drugs gone from her body, she started having clear thoughts for the first time in years. She visited her aging father and decided to move in with him. For the next five months, she took care of him before he passed away.

For ten years, her cry for help had appeared to go unanswered but time and again, God saved her from herself. In Jeremiah 29:11 (MSG), the Bible says, "I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out -- plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for." God has a plan for each of us; His ways surpass ours, His thoughts are higher than ours, but His love - oh the love! It is always unconditional!

Why do you keep failing at suicide? Because the Lord, your Father in Heaven, has a plan for your life! He has a task for your lifetime that only you can fill! "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them" (Romans 8:28 NLT). If you have tried to commit suicide and failed, this is God's way of telling you that you are precious in His sight and He wants you here, now, for a purpose far greater than you could ever imagine! Jesus said, "I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of" (John 10:10, MSG).

Read A Personal Story About Suicide.


What do you think?
We have all sinned and deserve God’s judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, "Jesus is Lord," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.

What is your response?

Yes, I want to follow Jesus

I am a follower of Jesus

I still have questions



Copyright © 2002-2021 AllAboutLifeChallenges.org, All Rights Reserved