When?

When did I accept God?  It’s difficult to put a specific date on it, but off and on through my life I’ve hated God, blamed God, hoped that He was there, prayed for my wishes to come true, and even completely ignored Him.  I didn’t have parents who went to church and to be honest I grew up not knowing much about God.  I would occasionally attend with my grandmother and later, when I met my husband, would go with his parents.  For the most part I was indifferent to God.  I have been through a lot of hardships and struggles in my life and thought if He is known as a “loving God”, He must hate me.  He has shed a bright light on why I went through what I did, (those stories will come later), and I am who I am because of them.  I sometimes still question why I have to endure situations or deal with terrible life issues, but now I know that He will show me later.  I have learned that I must have faith in Him and trust Him to see me through it.  All of it is for Him.  Now stop and think about that: “All of it is for Him”.  What am I crazy?!!?  I have to go through all the hurt, all the pain, and it’s all for Him.  How does that make any sense?  Well, in today’s world that is one of the most difficult things to understand and accept.  I hope to shed His light through my writings and show why I have faith.

For Him

I have sat here and racked my brain trying to figure out the worst thing I’ve been through and I came to this conclusion: there are too many to pick just one.  I decided to just pick one and write, so here it is:

When I was 18 years old I tried to kill myself.  Luckily I did not succeed, obviously as I am writing about it.  I had many things that contributed to my suicide attempt, but most of it came from not feeling loved and having low self-esteem. A few weeks prior to my attempt, my boyfriend of almost a year broke up with me.  That hurt and hurt bad, but I found out one evening that he had cheated on me.  He was sleeping with someone else while we were still a couple.  That more than hurt, it was devastating.  We all know the expression “getting your heart broke”; well that is not a joke.  My chest hurt and it felt like my heart was physically being ripped from my chest.  At times I thought it would either stop beating or explode from beating to fast.  It was a dreadfully horrible feeling and it completely took over my being.  I could think of nothing else but ending my life to end this pain.  I went into the closet just outside my bedroom door and grabbed every prescription bottle I could get my hands on.  I didn’t look to see what was in any of them.  I put them in my room and then walked down the hallway to my parents’ bar (it’s a real old west saloon-looking bar) and went into the fridge where I grabbed a couple of beers to help down the pills.  I remember not feeling much at this point, numbness has settled in.  I went back to my room, opened a beer and drank half of it.  Then I opened up each pill bottle one by one and took all of the contents with a huge gulp of beer.  After every bottle was empty, I thought to myself, “The pain is almost gone for good.”  For a reason I did not know at the time, I picked up the phone and called one of my good friends to tell her I loved her and goodbye.  I could hear the panic in her voice so I told her it would be okay and I hung up the phone.  I lay on my floor waiting for me to pass on.  I was quite drowsy from the booze and medicines, but I distinctly heard sirens.  I knew they were for me and I pleaded with God to take me before they came.  A loud pounding on the front door woke my parents and I could hear a man demanding to know where their daughter was.  The rest happened so fast it was a blur.  I had not hid any of the pill bottles or beer cans, so one of the many men standing around me asked me if that was all I took and if I knew how much I had taken.  I didn’t know how much, I didn’t count.  Then he made me drink something (later found out it was Syrup of Ipecac) and insisted I drink lots of water.  I remember being in the ambulance and then being in the hospital, but I don’t remember much else.