On dying

This isn’t at all what I planned on sharing with you this week. I have a half-written piece about a completely different topic that was supposed to be published today.

But, the more I wrote, the more I kept thinking about a different set of events and how they powerfully  illustrate the presence of God in my life. 

I had not planned on sharing these stories, at least not yet. But I’ve learned to listen to that still small voice when it keeps telling me to do something, even if I’m not 100% sure I agree with it. 

A trigger warning before we begin. 

The following includes my own experience with suicide, rape, pregnancy loss, abuse and neglect. If that feels like too much for you, please feel free to stop reading now and click away. I am not sharing these details to be salacious, or to shame anyone. I have so much grace for how complex navigating these life and death circumstances was for everyone involved.

My hope is that you are able to take away the most powerful parts of this story – the ones about truth, light and ultimately, life. Unfortunately,  in order to get to the good, I need to start with the bad. 

I have to tell you about the two times I almost died. 

On dying, part 1

I tried to take my own life in my early 20’s. 

There were about a million reasons why. Looking back, I can see that I was absolutely clinically depressed and anxious. I’d struggled with suicidal ideation for years. 

I used to tell myself, “Well, if this relationship, or job prospect, or test at school doesn’t work out, I can always end it.” Dying was like a coping mechanism and a security blanket for me. It was my Plan B, and in many ways, it helped calm my crippling anxiety. 

One night, not unlike any other, I was out drinking way too much with my friends and other random people I’d just met. There was a boy (until about a year ago, there has always been a boy) who was interested in me. I was interested in being loved and valued. Any boy would do. 

I was really wasted. It is more than 25 years later, so the details are fuzzy, but I got into a fight with one of my closest friends over this boy. In the time it took for me to get home from the bar, I decided that it was time to die. 

I was so ashamed of myself, questioning why I would even consider this random boy more than this friend who unabashedly loved me. I know now that it had absolutely nothing to do with my sweet friend or the boy.

You see, on another night, six months earlier, I was also out drinking way too much with my friends and other random people I’d just met. We were on a girls’ trip to San Francisco, hanging out with a bunch of guys we’d just met, who were out for a Bachelor Party.

At first, it was fun. Then things went sideways, really, really fast. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but someone had drugged my and one of my friend’s drinks. Two of the boys separated us from the others and quickly got us into a cab. 

I won’t share details of what happened when they dragged us up to their apartment, but it was one of the most degrading and shameful experiences of my life. By the grace of God, my friend came to a few hours later, after the boys were done with us and long passed out, and found me crouching in a corner. She got me dressed and figured out how to quietly sneak out onto the fire escape and climb down to safety. (This girl is a freaking boss, btw. Always has been. Always will be.)

We somehow made it back to the hotel room we were staying in and I immediately took a bath, determined to wash away how dirty I felt. I refused to let my friends call the cops. I was so ashamed and felt completely worthless. I wanted it all to go away.

Fast forward back to six months later when I got into a fight with a friend over a boy, and decided it was finally time to make it all go away. 

I took 57 different pills, all I could find in the house. I counted them as I swallowed, one by one. Each one made me feel a little bit better. 27, 28, 29… I would be free soon.

I thought I would fall asleep and peacefully pass. I was wrong. 

I began violently shaking and my body felt like it was on fire with searing pain. I wanted to die, but not painfully, so after about 10 minutes of hell, I called 911. 

I remember getting my stomach pumped. I remember getting up to use the restroom after I was told that my liver was 10x’s larger than it was supposed to be, and passing right out onto the dirty hospital floor.

I remember my friends coming to see me, crying, washing my face, and combing my hair. 

And, more than anything else, I remember waking up and hearing a voice say, “You are not going to do this anymore, child,” with a soothing, calm, authoritative tone. I knew it was God, even though I didn’t really know what that meant or what to do with it. 

The suicidal ideation that had plagued me for years ended in that instant. It just simply wasn’t there anymore. Dying by my own hand was off the table for the first time in my life. 

On dying, part 2

In the beginning of our marriage, my husband and I wanted a child of our own. We tried for months and months, and I had several early miscarriages. In late 2012, I was finally pregnant. 

Unfortunately, when I was 12 weeks along, we lost the baby’s heartbeat. The doctor scheduled a D&C for the following Monday, to avoid any possibility of complications, but warned me that I would likely start naturally miscarrying before the appointment for the procedure. 

Sunday morning, I doubled over in pain. My husband, my two kids and I were in the parking lot after church and I could barely get in the car. I called my friend and without hesitation, she picked up my children without any expectation of when they would return. She wanted me to have the time and space to heal and thought it would be easier to have my husband all to myself to help me, instead of having to manage the kids. (My kids still talk about how much fun they had at Miss Jessie’s when they got to go for that impromptu slumber party. She made them egg and toast “birds nests” and they still consider her to be one of the very best chefs. There really are angels here on earth.)

The pain grew more and more intense throughout the afternoon until finally, at around 5:00 PM, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I begged my husband to take me to the ER. I knew something was wrong.

I was in more pain than I had ever experienced in my life, bar none, but when I was seen by the ER doctor, a woman, she dismissed me as overreacting. She said, verbatim, “Labor is hard and hurts. That’s why they call it labor!” sending me home with painkillers and without performing an ultrasound. She said that I was scheduled to see my doctor for the procedure and he could take a look the next day. 

Shortly thereafter, I was screaming out for Jesus to save me, to let me die, to end the pain, in my blood splattered bathroom. It went on for hours and hours. 

Alone, in the bathroom, I prayed over and over, “Please God. Help me. Make it stop. Please. Please. Please.”

I had no idea where I was at one point. I had no idea where my husband was and why he wasn’t helping me. The bathroom swirled around me for hours, and the only sound I remember is my own guttural screams and pleading. Then, suddenly, the pain completely stopped. Like God snapped his fingers and it disappeared. 

I got to my feet and cleaned up some of the blood splatters on the wall (in a daze, I was concerned it might seep into the paint and stain) and then went out to find my husband.

It was well after midnight. He was playing a video game, and had been all along. 

A cold shame flooded my body when I realized he wasn’t wearing headphones. He’d heard my screams. I could’ve died in that bathroom and he would’ve continued playing LEGO Batman. The reality of it was too much to bear at that point. I sat down on the couch, hoping he would stop the game, but he kept playing.

Eventually, I found the words to interrupt and we went to bed.

Early the next morning, I called my doctor and explained what had happened. He assumed I had “passed the pregnancy” but asked me to come in before the office opened so we could do an ultrasound and double check. 

As soon as he saw the screen, he looked at my husband, not me, and said, “She has a clot the size of grapefruit right up against her cervix” and then, “We need to go in for emergency surgery – fast.”

Within an hour, I was in surgery and given a blood transfusion to replace all the blood I’d lost and continued to lose.

When I woke up from surgery, my husband was stressed and pacing. He was supposed to be at an important gig for work later in the day and was worried about how long it all was taking. He was planning to call someone I barely knew to come and give me a ride home when I was discharged so that he could get to work.

I pleaded with him to please stay with me. 

He did, begrudgingly, but as soon as we were done at the hospital, he sped home, dropped me off and drove away to make his appointment. 

The crushing emotions hit me as I stepped out of the car. Deeply ashamed and feeling completely worthless, it was not dissimilar to how I’d felt back in that hotel room in San Francisco, 17 years earlier.

I’d lost our baby and my husband seemingly didn’t care if I lived or died. 

As I slowly made my way into the house and onto the couch, I told myself he just didn’t know what else to do, and didn’t know how to deal with the reality of what was happening to me. I chose to see it that way, despite every ounce of my being screaming that no matter what caused it, none of his response was OK.

As I drifted off from the still in my system meds I felt, in the stillness, completely and totally alone.

I woke up on the couch a few hours later, a dream still fresh in my mind. In it, I was getting married. My maid of honor was there and was helping me get the dress on and fix my hair. 

I was so happy. 

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. She said it was from the groom and that he wanted me to have it before the wedding. As I opened it, pictures started falling out of the card. 

They were pictures of women and children. Hundreds of them. 

In the dream, it became suddenly clear that the groom was God and that he was giving me the chance to know and help these women and children as a gift.

A gift from a groom to his bride.

When I woke, I felt such a sense of peace and knowing. None of my pain would be wasted. Even if my earthly marriage was difficult, there was another relationship that superseded it. 

A little over a year later, I started writing at Not The Former Things, specifically to help women and children. 

I had to almost die, twice, to turn my gaze away from finding my worth and value in men and towards the irresistible, loving presence of God. 

Almost dying is what has given me life, twice.

Help, if you need it

I have been in therapy for years to process all of this. It’s actually easier for me to share these events with you than it is to share what’s happening in my life right now, because I’ve had time to really process them. There’s enough scar tissue built up around these wounds that we can poke them a bit and it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.

I realize this may not be where you are at as you are reading this. 

If you are struggling with any of the things I shared today, or if this has triggered anything else in you, I want to leave you with a few resources that I have found to be incredibly healing. 

• Working with a trauma informed therapist
• Betrayal Trauma Recovery.org – especially the daily group sessions
• Should I Stay Or Should I Go by Lundy Bancroft
• It’s Not You by Dr. Ramani Durvasula
• Get Out Of That Pit by Beth Moore
• The stories of Hagar, Abagail, Rahab, and Mary Magdalene in the bible. (If you don’t have a bible of your own, the one I am currently reading is this one. It’s the Common English translation and is so much easier for me to read and connect with these days.)

If you are struggling, please tell someone you trust or even tell someone anonymously online (BTR.org is a wonderful place for this). Light overcomes the darkness. Bringing things into the light, in my experience, makes all the difference in our healing.

Please know, some links above may be affiliate links. Thank you for your support!

Prayer

If you would like prayer, please feel free to email me at [email protected] and I will happily pray for you this week. 

If you would like to support my work, please click here.