What God Did

Many of you are going to disagree with what you are about to read, or find much of it hard to believe, if not downright fantastical, but I swear to you, that it is all true. I apologize for the length of this post, but this is a long story, and I don’t want to glaze over anything important.

I’ve been a Jedi for longer than I’ve been anything else in my entire life. At 37 years old, that really means something. But there is one condition that has lasted longer even than that, and that is depression and anxiety. I’ve dealt with both for almost my entire life. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t dealing with it. In 2005, however, I hit rock bottom. I was so desperate that I didn’t see a way out. So, I tried to kill myself by crashing my father’s car head on to an oncoming tractor trailer.

I don’t actually remember doing it, but I do remember thinking it. It seemed like the most assured way to die. But the weeks leading up to that day, and many weeks after, I have no memory of these events. My first memories are of what I can only call Hell. You see, it is my belief that I died for a short time. I had, after all, broken both arms and both legs and had serious damage to my abdomen. There was little hope for my survival. And yet, here I am. But like I said, what I remember is being in horrible places, being unable to move but experiencing the most stressful and unpleasant scenarios I could possibly imagine. You see, I don’t think Hell is a place of fire and intense heat, or of physical torture. Instead, it is a place of torment, more emotional and mental than anything else (which, by the way, is much worse). It is hard to describe exactly what it was like, but try to imagine being absolutely alone, separate from EVERYTHING. I also experienced hallucinations and nightmares as I was regaining consciousness.

When I eventually came to, I found myself lying in a hospital bed, being told what I did. I was shocked. I had no memory of any of it, so to finally hear an explanation of what happened, it was confusing and unbelievable. Unfortunately, my experiences in the lands of pain were just beginning, as the next 3 months were torture as well. Feeling alone, feeling trapped. Follow-up surgeries, physical therapy, etc.

Even after 3 months in the hospital, I would find myself back in for complications. However, the very fact that I survived such a horrible crash is, without beating around the bush, a miracle. Somehow I managed to escape any head injuries. All my wounds healed, and though I can’t be as active as I once was, I can go on to live a mostly normal life. I feel like God forgave my suicide attempt, and gave me a second chance. During one of my returns to the hospital, the chaplain there came to see me and prayed with me. At the time I was in incredible pain. But after we prayed, tears came to my eyes and I felt the pain vanish. I had accepted Jesus as my savior. Sadly, this is not the end of the story.

A year later, I hit rock bottom again. The medications that I was being treated with weren’t working. This time I tried to kill myself through cutting. Much the same thing happened this time around, but I was at least spared the trip through Hell again (as far as I can remember). However, I put myself in a worse situation. I developed a colostomy. For those that don’t know, it is essentially a hole in one’s intestines. I dealt with that from 2006 to 2017. I won’t go into the gory details, but let your imagination run with it, because it was very unpleasant. Something I’ll never forget my mom saying to me at the time: “Sometimes God gives us second chances. And third chances, and so on.” I was given much more effective medications, and I haven’t dealt with serious depression ever since.

Last year, I had one last surgery, to repair the colostomy. One would think that this would be the end of my suffering. However, for some reason, I experienced the worst hallucinations and nightmares of all. If you’re at all curious what they were, you can read this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mYQjmELccM8ri-J1iulmNEEVad1MK9NBveg3Gbwy86c https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mYQjmELccM8ri-J1iulmNEEVad1MK9NBveg3Gbwy86c It was horrific. But what was miraculous was that the surgery wasn’t supposed to be my last surgery; it was only supposed to be a step toward my last one. However, my surgeons were forced to go about it in a different way. And today? I am healed. Back to normal. In total, I spent 2-3 years in the hospital.

Now, I know what some of you might say, denying what I believe to be Hell and what I consider miraculous. I can’t expect you to accept it outright, because you didn’t experience it, I did. However, I ask you to consider the idea of God and Jesus. If you don’t believe me, then do your own research. Lately I was feeling kind of miserable, because I couldn’t figure out what to do with my life. Something my father said brought it all into focus. I was at the time thinking about how miserable I was, and my he said, “You know, someone should make a video about Jesus on trial like that Kavanaugh guy, people asking ‘How can you and God be One?’ or ‘How can you be the ONLY way?’” Something exploded like a sun going nova inside my brain. Something suddenly made sense. So I prayed to God, asking him what I was supposed to do. Immediately, and very clearly, I heard in my mind, “Tell your story.”

And so, here I am.

I'm very glad you are feeling better Jacen, and you've come to some understanding through your experiences of the events that works for you. Thank you for sharing. I don't think anyone can object to the description you gave here, as it was your understanding of the term "hell". I would say that experience matters even in relatively scripture based faiths as the abrahamic religions - else why are there practices like sufi dancing or lectio divina? Wisdom comes in all kinds of forms. If it didn't any theologian would also be a saint and all saints would be scholars, and that would be an end to it.