Meeting God, being healed from depression, and loads more!
I met with God at the end of July after a battle with depression which I was starting to believe was going to kill me. I was having thoughts of suicide so regularly that I was finding it hard to function, and I was often running through different scenarios in my head (quickest, easiest, cleanest, etc). I realized that if I didn't do something to help myself, then I wasn't going to be around to see my kids grow. I was feeling so incredibly confused as I didn't want to hurt the ones I love, but at the same time I couldn't bear to spend another day suffering the immense pain I was in and the horrible thoughts that were haunting my mind.
I wanted to talk to people who were in the same position as me and tried looking up suicide chat forums on the internet. Of the first two I came across (both American), one was offering to sell you the ideal tablets for a quick, easy and painless demise, and the other was showing you a beautiful place in the mountains that was a popular suicide spot. The Idea was that the last thing you saw was somewhere beautiful. I looked on the Samaritans website and the advice for anyone feeling suicidal was to talk to them or anyone, but talk to someone (I will never forget how much my mother cried, and begged me never to leave her in such a way).
I gave up work as a lorry driver at that point as I was sleeping alone in my cab all week long and knew I had to be around people for my own safety. I went to the doctors for whatever they could give me to make the pain go away and was prescribed a powerful dose of antidepressants and signed off work. I was told to stay on these tablets for about a year. I was also told that I would need to come off the antidepressants very slowly and to gradually reduce the dosage over a few months as to just stop them would cause my mental state to crash sending me over the edge and making me feel even lower.
Whilst all this was going on I was desperate for someone to tell me what to do. I was smoking more heavily than I had done in the twenty years since I'd started, I was drinking myself to sleep at three in the morning after taking antidepressants, painkillers, and sleeping tablets, and just wishing I would die in the night as I truly hated myself. I had failed, I was lost, and I just wanted someone to tell me what to do. I certainly didn't know.
A friend of a friend had caught a fleeting glimpse of me one afternoon and asked me why I was so sad. I explained how lost and scared I felt. I told her that if I could have anything, it would be to have the chance start my life over and to live my life differently. I felt I had brought a lot of my own self destruction upon myself and I explained that for a long time I had a favourite song called ‘Return to innocence’. I told her that was what I wanted. I wanted to be returned to innocence and start my life again.
She told me that she knew someone who could help me with that. She asked if she could pray for me. She had been really nice and listened to me for ages so the least I could do was let her pray for me. It seemed to be something she thought might help, although I wasn’t so sure.
I remember feeling better after that – a lot better if fact. There was a very strange feeling coming over me. It’s very hard to explain what was going through my mind that evening. Up to that point I was just a regular kind of person. I swore too much (well, I was a trucker), I laughed at the sort of jokes that I should't have and I was drinking as well. I really wasn't expecting to be saved by God, but I really felt elated that night. Yeah, sure I was still so sad that I could burst into tears at a moments notice but I was experiencing a greatly lifted level of optimism that was breaking through all the barriers and I was actually feeling spasms of happiness fighting my depression to the point where I was smiling. I was really smiling from within and not just to make people feel less awkward. I felt as though something had gotten inside me and was actually tickling me and making me want to laugh and be happy.
My friend invited me round to have dinner with herself and her husband. After dinner we all chatted about what had been discussed that night, and I confessed that after I had been prayed for by her the first time it did seem as though a very heavy dark cloud had been lifted from my shoulders. I was still lost and confused, but I found that I was smiling from within, big happy smiles, not just the tears of a clown anymore.
The three of us spoke and I was explaining how I wanted to know more about Christianity. They told me about the Alpha Course gave me some books to read. A few days later I asked if I could go to church with them. I was amazed and overwhelmed with the joy and love that the people in the church were both giving to and getting from Jesus, and I started to get it. I was already feeling that there was light there on offer to me if I would only just accept it. I looked around to see people wearing trainers and t shirts. No-one was wearing a dog collar and, unless I was mistaken, there was a band too! This wasn't somewhere people were gathering to be good people and feel like they were doing there bit to make them socially acceptable. Oh no. These people were drawn to this place. These people were full of love and worship. They looked incredibly happy and some were so overwhelmed in their worship that they were falling about the place and dancing too.
I was becoming acutely aware of that Jesus had led me here. He wanted me to follow him and be saved so that I may be set free of the darkness. He wanted me to realise I could have a relationship with him. He loved me enough to be happy and was there for me. Even me. Until that point I felt like one of life’s losers; pathetically sad and lost and a completely broken man. But I realised from the words of the songs we were singing and the smiles on the faces of the warmhearted people I was meeting that I was indeed welcome and able. The rest was up to me.
I came the next week and at the end of that meeting I prayed to hand myself over to God and I became a Christian.
It was also on that day that I had decided to give up smoking. I prayed for this with others from the church and I have not smoked since. Not only did I give up smoking that day but I found it incredibly easy. I had been smoking for over twenty years and was a fairly heavy smoker.
A week later and I decided that I would give up the antidepressants too. In the eyes of the medical profession what I was doing was very irresponsible as I was supposed to be on them for much longer so that I could be healed of my acute anxiety and depression, and only then could I very slowly reduce my dosage over the following months so as not to cause more harm to my mental state. I believed however that as Jesus had answered my prayer and helped a suicidal depressant person to give up his addiction to Nicotine at a time. I prayed for this with others and haven't taken any antidepressants since.
I didn't lose my mind, far from it. I became a much happier person with my new life and very quickly felt all the positive things that I used to enjoy coming back. I stopped hating myself and was really regaining my sense of humour (I was always clowning around before). Gradually I was feeling a sense of pride coming back into myself. Not pride that made me feel better than anyone else as I am still very humble, but the sort of pride that enabled me to look at myself in the mirror and say to myself, "you know what, you're alright". I felt as though I was happy and that I did deserve to live.
I have had so many experiences of things changing for the better in my life since becoming a Christian, and it's amazing to be able to have a relationship with Jesus everyday. I have had so much to thank him for and he has answered so many of my prayers, from healing to financial relief at times when really needed, and even keeping the traffic clear for me when I had a three hour drive to an interview.
Recently at church people were invited to come forward if they needed healing. I had backache and a stiff neck and wanted them sorted out. Whilst being prayed for I was amazed at the sense of warmth that I felt from my lower spine area. It was as though someone was pressing a heat sack against my back. Whilst this was happening I felt a sudden stream of air flowing from the inside of my ears outwards as if I had straws in my head cleaning my ears internally. I was surprised at this as I had been suffering with my ears popping and going dull for a long time and was well aware that there was something wrong with them, but on this morning I hadn't even thought of my ears. I was concentrating hard on my back as if telepathically trying to tell Jesus where I need healing. It amazed me that while he was healing my back, he sorted my ears out at the same time; two healings instead of one.
I have since been to the doctors and had my ears looked at and was told that there was no sign of anything wrong with my ears as they are completely clear and appear undamadged. I was also asked by the doctor if I was still on the antidepressants. I told him that I had given up the tablets ‘cold turkey’, that I was a Christian and that Jesus who had healed me. I was expecting a great big lecture, but instead he just smiled and acknowledged what I said.
I speak to Jesus every day now and in a world of wrongdoing and difficulty that can so easily drive a man to self destruction, I feel safe. I have Jesus in my life and the Bible as a shield, and with that, I can withstand any spiritual attack, and I will.
