Thank you brother Paul... hallelujah you've been set free!
What did your wife do to literally help you back up?
Greetings Melissa
There is no easy way to answer this, if you have read other comments I have made of the past add that to this below, by seeing some of the things it is easy to see how easy it is to slip into depression and sink deeper into it like going down in sinking sands.
Fortunately my wife caught on just in time. I was in a black hole, every time I tried to climb out I fell deeper in, your mind goes into a gyro spin, repeating the same things over and over in your mind. I would hide away, if someone came to the door I hid, it is an horrible state to get in and does not take much to flip the switch so to speak. My thoughts got darker, depression got deeper, I thought about dying, I then thought how I would die, not easy being disabled and not going out. My wife was at work, I was alone, those were the times, the darker times, the repeat thought times for me.
My mind would think how, what way, I had tried to drown myself in my teens after being sexually abused by a vicar, there were only a few of us lads at the pool, no life guard, I went down the deep end slide, then down and up three times, on the last I heard a whistle but was taking in water. It didn't work out. Yet a few years later at 17 I was crushed inside a concrete tunnel incinerator, buried except my boots yet I lived.
At 42 around the time of coming to Christ I had an accident at work, I was surveying a property, I always started in the loft worked downwards, then from the rear forward and job done. This time was to be different, my surveyors ladder was in place on the first floor, as I came out of the roof space onto the ladder, it slipped! There was no way I could know the carpet was on varnished floorboards, the mind goes into overdrive, I thought I would trap my fingers as the roof hatch came into place chopping off my fingers so I let go pulling my hands towards my body, they were saved but I twisted and my coccyx hit the corner of a radiator, I went through hell with pain and blood running down my legs. I went to the hospital and had an xray, nothing broken. The medical profession gave me pain killers and anti inflammatory, the pain was unbearable, so they doubled the dose, then the issues started, they were quick to say 'I had an allergic reaction' to the drugs. So my GP gave me other drugs, then more drugs, then more and more. I had 13 different drugs, I went back to the GP, my skin was flaking, the GP said it looked like dermatitis and I couldn't see anyone for 6-9 months there was a long waiting list! I pleaded do something, you have to do something looking her straight in the face.
That afternoon I lined all the drugs on a worktop and started listing them, the door bell went, it was the GP, I showed her the line of drugs, she tried not to show any signs but wanted to check me out. Then she said is your wife handy, can you get her to come home and take you to the hospital for tests, later I found out she had spotted the yellowing of my eyes and skin, I was admitted to an isolation ward, the doctors and nurses all wore full body cover white plastic and masks, this was 1990, not 2020. It was frightening for sure I eventually recovered but was left with a damaged liver, which we now find is susceptible to drugs, I am allergic to drugs but we do not know which until I have to try them.
The medical profession told me my liver was a bile producing organ that would replace itself in seven years. There was some hope, I was a new Christian around this time, I had accepted Jesus and forgive everyone, the vicar, others between, the doctors for prescribing so many drugs, it was another of those times to move forward in the Lord. But after seven years I became ill, my eyes yellowed, everything started going through my mind, they had conned me, they had told me that so I didn't put in a claim, depression started to eat into me, it took me down. I was retired on medical grounds some time after, but we couldn't afford to stop where we lived, we couldn't pay the mortgage if we stopped there, so we returned back up north where we had come from. But the injury when I was 17 and the hit to the coccyx gave me massive pain issues and my mobility deteriorated. It was a very slippery down hill slope.
We ended up in a small rented bungalow for disabled, I was being stripped of everything yet again! It was very small and very depressing, but to add to this I had always been the grafter, the man who worked to supply for his wife and children, now I had to reply on my wife to be the bread winner, that added to the weight and depression, it was like being buried and every time you try lift your head someone throws something else heavy on you. I was heading for the final straw.
Being disabled, I cannot walk much, mainly hobble, I cannot manage steps of 3-4" or more, how could I get out of this hole, how could I end it. I had tried to drown as a teenager, I had been given an overdose of prescribed medicines, what else was left? I thought, they went over and over in my mind, I started to plan the only way I could think of, for this period in my saved life I was cutting myself off Jesus, I was about to do the greatest sin, the worst sin possible, to take the life God had given me. I decided to hang myself, but how could I do it, I came up with the idea of stacking books on the floor, to make little steps so I can get high enough to do it. |I ordered a short timber beam that would span the lot hatch space, I order a nylon tow rope on mail order, I had candles for the wax. That was how close I was when my wife found the orders and knew I was up to something. What did she do, she did what any woman would do, she went at me like a ton of bricks, demanding answers, why, why, why, how long, what if, what about me, what do you do every day. Wake, loo, eat, go on computer, have a brew go on computer, go to loo, go on computer. Why do we get cards through the door to have to go pick up parcels when you are here to take them at the door, she said, I hide. How hard it is to think this, to say this, to realise where I was and where I would soon be.
My advice to everyone would be, if you ever see someone deeply withdrawn, depressed, with time on their hands alone for hours, talk to them, encourage them, share Jesus, do what ever you can, but do not let them have hours on end on their own in such a situation. It is not always easy I appreciate that, pray, pray, pray for them but try get some involvement, chat about nothing, chat about anything, give there mind other things to think about. Depression is evil, the black hole gets deeper until one day in is better to go into the dark than keep trying and failing to get out. The light dims, blackness takes over. As deep and dark as that is, it is a cowards way out, you choose to end it all, not thinking you will go to hell, that doesn't enter your head, but in a single selfish act taking your life, you leave others whi love you to pick up the pieces.
Thank God for Jesus, no matter what we go through, we will never suffer like what Jesus suffered for us and our sins.
Bless you
