"Rock bottom" is a phrase that's used a lot without much thought given to what it actually references. Rock bottom, I suppose, is bedrock. As far down as one can sink through mud and muck and mire. Rock bottom is where everything has been stripped away.
But rock bottom is also where we can discover what we're really about.
What we're really made of. What truly lies at the core of our existence, our being.
Roughly a year ago, I hit rock bottom. How, why, and other details I may discuss in a future post. Only God knows at this point. It's entirely possible that many confessions will be made on this blog over time. But I need to confess one major embarrassment here at the genesis:
I have been guilty of defying God's sovereignty. Worse, I am guilty of denying his grace. When I hit rock bottom, I discovered that in my heart of hearts, I really didn't believe in a God of grace as I had been claiming for so many years.
Self-forgiveness has always been, for me, rather impossible. When I was young, if I colored outside the lines on just one page, the entire coloring book went into the trash. Ever since the age when most kids are learning to tie their shoes and learn the alphabet, I have had zero tolerance for imperfection in my life. Over time, a lot of toxic things took root in my heart as a result. One of those is that I never learned a healthy way to deal with emotional pain.
In never learning to accept God's grace in my life (which is the equivalent of denying it, in my estimation), I gradually learned to defy his sovereignty. More specifically, I became enamored with suicide as a way of escaping pain.
My first suicide attempt was six weeks after my dad's sudden death in 2004. I was hurting deeply. Things were broken and I didn't know how to fix them. I'm a fixer. It's part of being addicted to control, I've since learned. And so one night, when it was all too apparent that I couldn't fix my problems, that they lay outside my control, I swallowed a bunch of pills and tried to slit my wrists. Friends found me and called 911. That was my first suicide attempt. Sadly, it wouldn't be my last. With brief exceptions, suicide wasn't an issue for me again until my son's unexpected death nearly 7 years ago. Since then, it's been a constant dark companion.
And I want to explain how. I want to pull back the curtain on depression and suicidal thinking in hopes that it will help someone. I want to give folks a glimpse into the fog of depression. I'm convinced that those who struggle with suicide are very misunderstood, which pushes them deeper into their pain, makes them feel trapped, and deceives them into thinking no one really cares.
The thing is, I can't do that in one blog post. I may not be able to do it successfully in an entire series that runs for weeks, months, or years. But I feel compelled to do what I can.
I titled this blog "Defying Sovereignty" because, at my very worst, when the desire to kill myself is strongest, the thought of defying God's sovereignty is the lone reason why I can't bring myself to pull the trigger (whether literally, figuratively, or sometimes both). I don't expect you to agree with theology (and I have no desire to debate it with you), but the thought that saves me at my worst is, "It is not yet God's good pleasure to kill you. If he wanted you dead, you'd be dead already. Now move along."
It's not a fear of hell. It's not my family's grief. It's not my girls' trauma that save me. It's the belief that my death is God's prerogative, not mine.
The flip side of that coin is an abiding belief that there is some good reason God has allowed me to live thus far, and I'm curious to see what he has in store. Perhaps, just maybe, dare I hope? that my pain and sin can be put to redemptive use as a part of his grand scheme to reunite all things in his Son.
So it is, when I reached rock bottom—when my pain and sin became too immense to move beyond—God began to reveal to me that I have one redeeming quality in my bankrupt self.