I was recently interviewed by Sean Wellington for his podcast Suicide Noted. See this blog post for my thoughts about the podcast in general. The episode with my interview has not dropped yet, and I’ll certainly post about it when it does. But I can’t wait until then to start talking about something that happened during the interview.

During the interview, Sean asked me a question nobody has ever asked me before. A question I never asked myself before. But once I heard the question, I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me. And I’m reeling from the implications of it.

Let me explain. We were talking about the night I attempted suicide at age seventeen. Some of you know this story already – and if you don’t, feel free to buy a copy of my book Darkwater – this story is in chapter 11. But I’ll give you the general outline here.

It was late at night. I was standing in a tree, with a noose around my neck. I was ready to jump, because I felt incredibly guilty. So guilty, like I could never be redeemed. Any time I hurt someone, or thought I had, it pierced my heart like a dagger. I was so scared of who I was – it seemed like no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get any better. I felt like I was just a terrible, terrible person, and I convinced myself that the world would be better off without me.

I believed in God; in fact, my faith was pretty strong at the time. And while I believed that God loved me, I also believed that God loved the world. I didn’t exactly think that it was God’s preference that I kill myself, but I thought that God would understand that this was the best thing to do. So while I was up in that tree, I was praying. As scared as I was to keep on living, I was also scared to jump. So I prayed for strength, I prayed for God to give me the strength to go through with this plan. I prayed for the strength to jump, the strength to end my life.

And then I suddenly saw a light in the distance. And here’s how I always talk about that light. I’ll quote from Darkwater:

Near the horizon, a bright light suddenly shone. It was a beacon, a lighthouse shining through the darkness. From one perspective, it was probably a street light popping on, or someone’s garage door opening. All I saw from a physical standpoint was a light. Nothing more. Just a flash of brightness amid the dark.

But to me in that moment, it was a sign, the surest sign I’d ever seen. It was the Star of Bethlehem, shining in the sky, the star that once led the magi to the Christ child. It was the Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. It was the Light of the World, not hidden under a bushel but out in the open for all to see. It was a sign from God, from the Lord, my light and my salvation.

It was a message from God saying, “No.” I could almost hear the voice of God saying to me,

NO. DO NOT DO THIS. CLIMB BACK DOWN.

But Sean said, “Hold on. Hold on. You were in the tree. You were praying for a sign from God to go through with it. You got that sign. And you immediately made a 180! What the hell?”

Or something like that. Once the episode drops, you can hear his response verbatim. And you can also hear the dead silence that followed. The dead silence in which I was completely speechless. I have talked about this story for over thirty years, and I don’t think I ever once thought of that.

I prayed to God to give me strength to die. God sent me a sign, and I immediately felt the strength…not to die, but to live.

That makes no sense. There must a problem with my story. Or there must be a problem with my memory. Or there must be a problem with the way I thought I felt. Or with the way I explain it. Or…

Because here’s the thing. I’m not someone who really believes much in physical miracles. I never really thought that God actually placed a light in the sky that night for me. I have always believed that that light was quite literally a streetlight or a house light. I have always felt that the miracle that happened that night was that God enabled me to interpret that streetlight the way I did.

But I can’t understand now how I completely flipped the other way. I wasn’t looking for a reason to live – I was looking for strength to die. So why did I suddenly find a reason to live? How did a simple light do that?

So I’m starting to wonder something. I’m starting to wonder if something happened that night that was even bigger than I thought before. I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t see a streetlight. I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t see something that I interpreted to be a sign from God. I’m starting to wonder if maybe God actually showed up in that moment.

I’ve got more to say about this, and I’ll blog about this again soon.

Image by Dorothe Wouters from Pixabay