Tag Overcoming Suicidal Thoughts

Love’s Healing Hands Will Pull You Through

Debbie B. Leave a comment

God is LOVE, and His love heals the deepest wounds. His love healed mine. Every heartbreak and every scar reminds me of this truth – the truth of how the love of Jesus Christ has carried me this far. Over six years ago, I could not have shared about God’s love — I was so lost in the dark. I was hopeless. I was severely depressed, I was drunk, and I was as good as dead. I had a hard time even wanting to know if God was real, so I tried to drink myself to death because my spirit was dead and I wanted my body to die too. I thought, you can’t hurt any longer when you’re dead, right? My plan was a bad plan and I am grateful that God intervened. As you can see, I am still here. I am sober, filled with His Hope, and I am alive – my heart beats again like never before. I am no longer barely surviving this life, I am thriving in it! It is a challenging life, but it is a beyond blessed life. I am only here because the Power of God, the same Power that raised Jesus from the dead, also raised me from the dead and I am forever grateful that I am still here sharing my tender and grateful heart with the world. Even if it is just one hurting heart that sees this and is inspired to cry out to God to rescue them as He has rescued me. Heaven rejoices over one!!!

My sinful and shameful past kept me from reaching out for too many wasted years. I was so lost that I actually believed the lies that God would never forgive me for my horrible choices in life. Well, those lies almost killed me. I cannot say this enough on this blog: THE DEVIL IS A LIAR – stop listening to the lies!! Jesus’ death on the cross was not in vain. Too many people think that they need to clean themselves up before crying out to the Lord for help. I used to think that, but I am glad I got desperate enough to stop waiting. If I had waited, chances are it never would have happened and I would have died in my sin. So if you’re anything like I was, I hope you will just surrender it all to the Lord right now. He’s waiting. You don’t have to do anything but surrender. God will give you desires to do what’s next. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you less and there’s nothing you can do to make Him love you more than He already does, so just do it. Give Him your broken spirit as a sacrifice – Scripture tells us that He does not despise a broken and contrite heart. (Psalm 51:17) That is awesome news. That is TRUTH. So don’t delay, there’s no promise of tomorrow.

I pray that you will step into the Lord’s Light of Grace today – Love’s healing hands will pull you through. You will start a new life of love, healing, and freedom that you have never known before. Thank You, Jesus. ♥♥♥

Give Up Your Life But Don’t Give Up On It!

Debbie B. Leave a comment

Earlier this week I was with my amazing sisters in Christ and at the end of our evening of being in God’s Word, we broke into one of the most powerful prayer sessions we have ever had. We prayed for many lost hearts for friends and other loved ones that we want to see in heaven someday. We prayed for their salvation. We prayed for prodigals to return to the Lord. We prayed for healing. We prayed for protection against the invisible enemy who tirelessly roams around seeking to steal, kill and destroy every one of us.

Remembering the powerful presence of God the other night prompted me to write this post. My heart is so heavy for the lost. Especially those who have lost or who are losing the desire to live — those who have lost all hope. I am praying against the enemy – he will not win this fight!

Like so many have, I almost gave up on life. Sometimes I wonder what might have been for those who could not hold on.  What if they held on long enough for God to intervene like He did in my life? I try not to spend too much time thinking about what could have been for people I do not know. It can mess with my mind and heart too much and I have enough trouble with that on my own. I have been through a lot of painful healing and growing through the past six years of this sober life I live, but I do not regret one moment of it. I am free from the pit of hell. I am sober. I am ALIVE.

Someone out there needs hope. Someone needs the hand of God to move in a mighty way. I can feel your pain in my heart at this very moment. It is gift – it is not one that I asked for and it is not easy to deal with, but I am grateful for it because I can stand in the gap and pray for many who are like I used to be. I don’t know who you are or what you are going through, but God sure does. He knows your name. He sent His one and only Son to die for you on that terrible beautiful cross. He wants you to give up your life to Him. He wants to give you His best. All He wants is your heart. He wants you ALL IN. He’s an all or nothing God.

If that someone is you, it is the devil’s lies that have brought you this low. He is a good liar. He is a powerful liar. But God is LOVE, TRUTH, and much more POWERFUL than any enemy we face. God’s Word promises that we will enjoy a long life – that all will go well with us IF we obey all His laws and commands. He wants to be our one and only God. We must love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength and we must commit ourselves wholeheartedly (Deuteronomy 6:2, 4-6). I am so grateful for what He has done for me. It took me a while to get to where I am today, it is definitely not an overnight transformation. But my first 44 years of life did not go well on my own. Thankfully the pain of staying the same finally became greater than the pain of changing. I almost died in my unwillingness to surrender all control to Him, but I finally surrendered. I believe I’d be dead today if I hadn’t. And loving and trusting and giving my life up for God gave me life like never before. I am glad to be alive and living on purpose today. Sometimes I go through a lot of training that is difficult and brings tears. Sometimes I feel like it is in vain. Sometimes it feels like I am not making any kind of difference in this world. More lies of the devil! That is why I never give up. That, and because I choose life today and every day because of God’s amazing grace and love. I thought this tonight…what if He spared my life so I can pray for YOU? Wow. If I am alive for just one person, that is a life worth living. My pain is not in vain!

Friend, I pray for God to touch your heart and change your life like He has mine. Give up your life, but don’t give up on it! God loves you! May He bring amazing men and women of God into your life who will help you to keep seeking Him wholeheartedly and may you also become someone who is willing to pray for another heart who has lost all hope. Imagine how many lives God may save because we said yes to Him – Yes to His precious gift of life. I think I can hear heaven rejoicing again. God bless you friend.

Thank You Lord, for bringing me and so many others from death to life…  ♥♥♥

 

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I am not proud of what these say of me…

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 Smiling but Dead on the Inside Drunk –  Sept. 2008

I never ever thought I would be brave (or crazy) enough to post old drunken pictures of me. It is not pleasant seeing this old truth about me. But I am grateful to God that my past is in the past and God is using all the bad stuff for good today. I would not be sharing these horrible pictures if it were not true! It took me a while to get courage to do this, but I feel like keeping it real about my alcohol abuse. Besides, how can I share about my miracle if I cannot openly share the hard stuff about the old me?

Anyway, I am celebrating my miracle sobriety milestone early because…well, because I am ALIVE and because I can! My heart hurts and rejoices at the same time when I look at those old photos. What I see in my eyes, the windows to my soul, is nothing but darkness and death. The smile means nothing. At least that is what I remember all too well — I just wanted to die. Actually, I was already dead inside. I was just using alcohol to try and finish the job, but it did not work the way I wanted it to. THANK GOD.

I do not want to wait for my official milestone date in order to celebrate. I am celebrating right here, right now. I am celebrating that I am alive when I should be dead. After twenty plus years of trying to drink myself to death and no end of the darkness in sight, I am celebrating that I found the Light – the Rock at the bottom — my Lord Jesus Christ who has saved me in so many ways! I am 27 days away from turning 50 years old and 28 days away from celebrating six full years of discovering that God is real. I discovered His power to change and because of that, I am sober, free, and living on purpose!

My life story is all over this blog so I am not going to rewrite it here. I just want to take this opportunity to Praise God for saving my life. I thank Him for pulling me out of the pit of hell and for setting this captive free. It has been a tough six years, but NOTHING is too hard for God to do within us when we get out of His way and let Him have His way. Soooo grateful that I caught on to that.

I am forever grateful and I pray with all my heart and soul that others will experience life like I am. I make a daily choice. I choose to be free from harmful vices. I have not relapsed, nor have I traded one vice for another. I am truly FREE. But only because of my Lord and Savior Jesus for giving me the power to change. It takes work, it takes faith and trust and the willingness to do some super hard stuff, but man is it so worth it. If you are struggling with something tonight, I am praying for your freedom. You can do it…JUST DO IT and reach for God above all and get ready to LIVE like never before.

God bless you and someone please…celebrate God’s mighty miracle with me! To God be the glory, amen? AMEN!

Nothing is impossible with God. This photo speaks for itself. Ah, the sober life with Him…cannot imagine any other way. Thankful!!! ♥

SURRENDER IS FREEDOM.

Christmastime Misery to Miracles: My prayer for the sad and lonely hearts this Christmas

Debbie B. Leave a comment

So many people suffer from sadness this time of year. It is mind-boggling to me being that I am one of those who has suffered since I was sixteen years old — I believed for so long that I was alone. I believed that something was wrong with me because I did not have the joy that I would see others have.  After all, it is Christmas – the most wonderful time of the year, right? OK, sorry. I never thought that was cute either, especially when I was in deep depression.

Well, this Christmas, just two months before my 50th birthday AND my six year milestone of sobriety (WOW…only God!), something extra incredible is taking place inside of my heart for the first time. The Holy Spirit of Christmas is moving and I have to tell the world about it because I know without a doubt that what God is doing for me at this very moment is something that He will do for anyone who calls out to Him wholeheartedly. No matter how long it takes, those who keep following, obeying, seeking, and trusting Him will receive their miracle too! But you must believe without a doubt and NEVER GIVE UP while waiting.

I pray this story of my own Christmastime miracle will reach many. I so want to encourage the hearts that feel like giving up and who perhaps are losing all hope. Do not give in to those thoughts that are from the devil wanting to destroy you. I know how tiring it is year after year to have the heavy heart that you are currently suffering. I walked with that heavy heart for over 30 years of my life.

For just a quick background of my story, one day, in my most desperate moment, God heard my sincere cries and reached down and changed everything. He changed me in ways I never dreamed of. I have been living an incredible life as a new Christian since 2010. Notice that I did not say it was an easy life, but incredible, nonetheless. For those who are new to my story, I suffered from severe depression and was tormented by thoughts of suicide. The only way I knew to deal with it was to drink as much as I could to kill the emotional pain with the hope that one day I would not wake up. But there came a day with a heartfelt rock bottom cry and that is when God sobered me up and took the severe depression away. It was a true miracle.

However, when Christmas 2010 came, I was discouraged by how heavy my heart became once again. I did not understand it. I pushed through and sometime after the New Year, I was all right again – only to find it start all over again come Christmas 2011…2012…2013…2014. Toward the end of 2014, I could not believe that I was starting to go backwards, spiritually speaking. In the Spring of 2015, I was entertaining thoughts of giving up. I was so tired of the fight. I was starting to believe once again that I was worthless and that everyone would be better off without me. I heard stories of recent suicides – I have a hard time explaining where my mind went with that, but it really had me thinking that maybe it is not such a bad idea after all (dang devil is such a liar).

So what happened that made me go backward? Well, it all started with an annual physical in September 2014 that suddenly had me going through invasive medical tests and procedures that caused a lot of physical pain. Although that was pretty bad and discouraging in itself, the part that really brought me down was the reason I was having to go through any of it. It was due to a repercussion from my past life. The poor choices I made long ago had caught up with me and the devil took advantage of my vulnerable state. He had me believing that I did not deserve God’s love. That I was a bad person and that was why I had to suffer the consequences of my choices. I got knocked down pretty hard spiritually and I would get up and be all right for a bit, but I would get knocked down again and again until I almost got lost in the dark again.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I never fully gave in. I still continued to cry out to Jesus for help. I had sisters in Christ listening to my tears and praying for me each week at Bible study — one being my pastor who would also answer every text message and email I had ever sent her during each week when I was struggling. My church prayed for me. I even had a dear and very busy brother in Christ make time to call me frequently to pray. I am so blessed because these wonderful people of God helped me to keep on keeping on and Jesus lit the pathway in the darkness so I could see just enough to get to the other side with Him.

It has been an incredible year of spiritual growth. That is what I love so much about this journey of walking with God in the center. NOTHING goes to waste. He truly uses all things for good. I received a clean bill of health from that last medical issue and I received much more than that! I have complete freedom for the first time in my entire life! GOD BROKE THROUGH, AND I BROKE FREE!!!! In that year-long struggle of dealing with depression, I became an incredibly strong woman of God. God’s Word, my sword, never leaves me and I am able to fight off every attack of the enemy since. I am eternally grateful. Now this is all wonderful, but this is not the miracle that I am wanting to share. But since this all helped me to open the way for God to give me the miracle, it is an important part of the story that needed to be told.

SO, the greatest lesson I learned through this year-long struggle was this: Getting past my past! That is it! I needed to completely let go of the shame…AGAIN. I had let it go before, but the enemy was able to sneak it back in when the medical issue came up. However, since I did not give in, Jesus once again took the pain away. He showed me that I am not worthless and He gave me His wonderful self-esteem — the days of no esteem are over. The enemy, the accuser of my life, has been silenced!  I learned that NOTHING in this world can ever change who I am in Christ. NOTHING, NO ONE, and NO THING defines me. Only God does and I know so well what He thinks of me. I know what He thinks of you too. Just open the Bible and listen to the Love He has for you that pours out all over the place.

This breakthrough that took place around August 2015 has been bringing some incredible blessings as I continue on in the journey. My strength has helped me to become an incredible prayer warrior for others, and it brought me the most beautiful gift I have experienced in a long time — God turned my Christmastime misery into a Christmastime miracle. I do NOT have a heavy heart this year! Friends, that is nothing short of a miracle, especially since my circumstances have not changed. I am still alone (meaning single and childless) and still have my losses in life, BUT have so much more in Christ and my eyes can see that now. I see more now what I have gained in Christ and that is a life-saving transformation! Jesus has filled every hole in my heart with His gift of grace and love. He has filled me with His Presence and I wish I could explain this better for those of you still suffer, because you need to feel what I am feeling. It is beyond incredible. With Jesus’ love consuming my heart now, there is absolutely no room for any sadness or darkness.  My heart, which is His heart, is pouring into yours at this very moment as you read this. I pray you can feel Him! He is right there with you! Open up and let Him pour in…

I also just want you to know that I get it – your heavy heart. I am praying for your miracle to come and I pray that you will not give up while you wait for it. Remember, I suffered for over 30 years, and after giving my life to the Lord, I waited another five years. But God came through, just like He promises too. While I waited, I took advantage of every challenge so that I could grow closer to God and grow stronger in Him. I am so in awe of His power that is available to those of us who seek it.

So, that is it. I have been talking about this a while, and writing down what is going on in my heart is difficult. I do not think I could ever do it justice, but I pray God gets through somehow. I just want to say again, never give up. Never give in. Trust in God. Surround yourself by godly people who will help keep you lifted when you are down and will encourage and love you every step of the way. Choose to make opportunities for lessons learned out of every challenge and wait to be amazed. You will be. It is a promise. It is HIS promise.

May your heavy heart be light soon – may it be filled with His light that drives out every ounce of darkness. God wants to turn your misery into a miracle too. Will you open up the way for Him? I pray you will. God bless you this Christmas and every single day. Keep pressing on, your miracle is on the way…

Now, if you will excuse me, Christmastime is here and I need to go tell it on another mountain!

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Jesus is the Light of the world — “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

 

Thoughts about Suicide: Why I chose to live and push through the pain…

Debbie B. Leave a comment

I wanted the pain to end, but I do not mind sharing that deep down, I really did not want to die. Most of us don’t. But there comes a point to where we are beyond exhausted from the fight and we just want to rest. When we think we are close to those final moments, I don’t think we can ever really fathom the “permanent” rest that is about to take place. But when you are lost, numb, and have lost all hope, death seems to be the only form of relief in store.

Why am I writing this? Well, it is with a heavy heart that I share that someone recently lost all hope and ended his life as a result. I do not think that he intended to leave so many unanswered questions (there were no obvious signs) and I definitely do not think that he intended to leave such unbearable pain for the loved ones he left behind. When the pain is so great, it is difficult to see or even think about anyone else’s pain.

I decided to take a chance to share my own thoughts and experience and perhaps shed some light for those who do not know what it is like to be like me or those who are no longer here. I am just me. I do not have all the answers and I will not pretend to know exactly what was on their hearts during the last hours of their lives, but I believe they did what they thought was right. Not only for themselves, but for those close to them. When I thought I would end my life, it was not only to end my own pain, but I truly believed that I was a burden to those who knew me and that they would be so much better off if I was no longer around. I got tired of trying to pretend that the pain in my heart was nothing. I got so very tired…

In my darkest days of torment, it became impossible to hide my depression. I thought the excessive alcohol consumption was a good mask, but I was wrong. The more intoxicated I would become, the more my depression would come out for others to see. It is interesting that nobody ever questioned it. I don’t blame them. They saw and listened to my tears, but I know it was too uncomfortable for any of them to say much about it. Besides, there was nothing that anyone could say to take my pain away. After some time, I isolated and drank more to kill the pain and myself, but all it did was make me sink deeper into darkness and depression and the desire to end the suffering. It is hard to explain why I kept holding on, I think it was being very close to my mother that helped me to hold on long enough for a rock bottom miracle to take place. It really is a mystery that I have had to let go of. Only God knows why.

As tired and lost as I was, I chose to live and to keep pushing through the pain of life. How? I finally found true HOPE. Where? In JESUS CHRIST ALONE. He met me at the bottom one day early in 2010 in a hospital room after my last night of binge drinking (little did I know then that it was my last night of drinking). That is when He made Himself real to me. I was 44 yrs. old. I never knew God before then. A lot of people are not sure if God is real, but I cannot deny the miracles and breakthroughs that have taken place and continue to take place in my life since I surrendered my broken and shattered heart to Him. He is the only reason why I am still here. This blog is full of true stories of the great things of God in a surrendered life for those who want to learn more about this incredible journey of overcoming. It is not just my story. None of it has been possible without the hand of God. It is never easy to be as vulnerable as I have become, but if I do not share what God can do for those who call out to Him wholeheartedly, then I really do not have a reason to be here still. Thankfully, God has shown me a reason to stay and my life is a testament of how He uses everything for good. My hope is that a heart will see tonight of what can be of their life too, if only they give it all to God.

For those who have lost loved ones to suicide, my heart hurts with yours. I pray that you, and those of you who have overcome suicidal thoughts like I have will also allow God to use what has happened to help save other lives. Many of you are and I am grateful. But many of you have not been able to. Too many times we keep things to ourselves out of shame or pride that keeps us from sharing our pain, but I want to encourage you to not hold back. So many are out there walking around thinking that they are all alone in their pain — that no one else can possibly ever understand. They need to know they are not alone. They need to know that God is real. I pray for more hearts to be vulnerable. I believe lives are depending on it. Some incredible blessings are in store for those who open their hearts for the benefit of others.  I had no idea how incredibly blessed I would become by allowing myself to be vulnerable and I cannot encourage others enough to follow my lead.

For those who feel something is wrong with a loved one but do not know what to say, please do not force yourself to say something just to have something to say. That can make things much worse. I did not want to hear how much I had to live for. It did not help to be told what and what not to feel or told “don’t cry.” That only made me want to shut down and shut everyone out for good. Know that just being there – just being a silent presence of love can speak longer and louder than you could ever imagine. Let God speak through your heart that way. And the number one thing that anyone can ever do for someone else is PRAY and BELIEVE God for it because when a believing person prays, great things happen.  I am alive today to testify to that truth.

My heart goes out to those of you who think that your life is not worth living. It is a lie. The devil is a liar and wants you to believe it. I pray God will open your eyes and hearts to trust Him fully and to see that Jesus willingly died a horrific death on the cross because He believed your life was worth saving. May knowing that He loves you that much keep you pressing on no matter what and remember that you are not alone.

Here is one more thing to ponder: What if choosing His gift of life and pushing through the pain helped another hurting soul to choose life too? Isn’t that something worth living for? I believe it is.

Thank you for listening to my tender heart. May God bless you through His story of this life – one of many — that He saved in so many ways. ♥