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I haven't told many people this story, for one thing, simply because it's such a long story and I don't know how many people would care enough to listen. I've told some friends bits and pieces, normally just to joke about the time I got handcuffed by the police officer with the funny name. (Unfortunately I'm not going to share his name here because I don't want to start internet gossip.) This happened 5 years ago, but for a variety of reasons, I decided it's time to share the whole story.
I accepted Christ when I was young, and ever since I was about 12, I wanted to be a missionary overseas. I loved Jesus, and spending my life telling people about him just made sense. As I grew older, that desire to be a missionary never went away. I had thought about being a missionary in Africa or Latin America, but I wasn't really set on any particular location.
One day in high school, my Sunday school class watched a video. I believe it was Jesus Among other Gods, based on the book by Ravi Zacharias. I don't remember much of the video, but one scene has always stuck in my mind. There were people--I think Hindus in India--that had metal rods stuck through the skin in their backs. This was supposed to be a form of penance. I had compassion on them because they didn't know God's love and grace. But I also felt that I understood them in a small way because I had struggled (in different ways) with feeling like I had to earn God's love or approval.
My family sponsored a girl from India for several years. She was a Christian but her family was Hindu. When she was 16, we suddenly had to stop sponsoring her because her parents had arranged her marriage to a Hindu man.
When it was time for college, I decided to go to Liberty, and probably the biggest reason was because they had an Inter-cultural Studies major (the name was later changed to Global Studies). I thought that studying something where I'd learn about different cultures would help prepare me to be a missionary. I visited a Cultural Anthropology class at College for a Weekend and I was hooked on the school. I started attending Liberty in the fall of 2010.
My first semester at Liberty, we had Missions Emphasis Week. We had speakers from all over the world, a Children of the World concert, lots of workshops on various topics, and international food tasting. A couple of the speakers worked in India, which is somewhere I had never really considered being a missionary. That week I learned about Unreached People Groups (UPGs) and the 10/40 window.
Joshua Project defines a UPG as "a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group without outside assistance. . . The original Joshua Project editorial committee selected the criteria less than or equal to 2% Evangelical Christian and less than or equal to 5% Professing Christians." Joshua Project defines the 10/40 window as "the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude." It "is home to some of the largest unreached people groups in the world." One of the speakers said that the 10/40 window is where there's the most need for missionaries, but it's where the least number of missionaries go. I decided I wanted to be a missionary somewhere in the 10/40 window.
That week I was reading a brochure on Hinduism that I had picked up from one of the missions organization's booths. As I read it, I felt for these people and how lost they were, and I started crying there in the computer lab.
The dorm I lived on that year had a big world map on the wall. The map had a dot for every people group, and the dots were different colors depending on what percentage of the population was Christian. The people groups with the lowest percentage of Christians had red dots. As I looked at the map, I realized that so many of the red dots were concentrated in India. The country was covered in red dots, to the point that the dots were overlapping.
Because of all these experiences that week, in addition to sponsoring a child from India and watching that video in high school, I felt that God was calling me to be a missionary in India. The next logical step seemed to be going on a mission trip to India. Liberty had a mission trip to India over Christmas break, so I applied.
I interviewed with the trip leader, which included sharing my testimony. I shared that I used to struggle with feeling like I had to earn God's love, and I wanted to show the people in India that punishing themselves or working to earn God's love wasn't necessary because of Jesus' death in our place. Somehow it came out in the conversation that I struggled with cutting. I struggled with depression, so cutting was something I had also struggled with for the past couple years. The lady who interviewed me thought that I wasn't ready to go to India because of this struggle. Parts of the trip could be very upsetting or stressful, which could trigger me to cut. She wanted me to continue going to counseling, and maybe I would be ready to go on the trip to India they were doing in the spring. We kept in touch, and after a few months I was doing better, but she still didn't think I was ready to go to India.
The next year I applied again to go on a trip to India in the spring. I talked to the same lady and she could tell I had changed. I remember her saying, "It's like I'm talking to a completely different person! I could cry!" She still wanted me to talk to one of Liberty's counselors who used to be a missionary, to see if she thought I was ready to go to India. I met with the counselor, but she basically said she didn't know. I finally admitted to the trip leader that my one reservation about the trip is that I have OCD, particularly about cleanliness. She said that she thought I was ready to go on any of Liberty's mission trips but India, because the part of India they'd be in would be very dirty.
In May of 2012 I went on a 2-week-long mission trip to the Middle East. The irony is that the country we were in ended up being pretty dirty! But it was a good growing experience for me that taught me to rely on God and resist some of my compulsions. It was an amazing trip, and I was thankful to finally get to go somewhere overseas.
Since I was a Global Studies major, I was required to do an internship overseas that was a minimum of 8 weeks long. In the fall of 2012 I started looking into and applying for internships. Since I thought God was leading me to India, I applied to do an internship there. The representatives of different mission organizations seemed to think we were committing to doing an internship if we applied for it. Because of this, I only applied for the one internship that I was really interested in. (In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea, but it's what I did.) In February of 2013, I interviewed with a representative of the organization that I planned to intern with. I was depressed then--not for any particular reason, but simply because I had depression. I was having a weird day and was stressed and nervous about sharing my testimony in the interview, so I felt like I wasn't really myself. I did share about my struggle with cutting because I feel like that is part of my testimony and I thought I should be honest. But I tried to emphasize that God was working in my life and healing me, and it wasn't as much of a struggle as it used to be.
About a week later, I got a call from the lady who interviewed me. While she said she had been crying and praying about me, I didn't get the internship. Since cutting was still a current struggle for me, she didn't think I was ready to intern in India. I was really disappointed, but I was okay that day.
The next day, February 22, I was really depressed and felt like I would never get to go to India. Since I believed I was supposed to be a missionary in India but kept getting rejected for trips and internships there, I felt like I had lost my purpose for living. I went to my 8:50 Genesis class as usual. (That semester I had most of my classes Tues/Thurs, and Genesis was my only class Mon/Wed/Fri.) After class I was walking to Convo (the required Convocation/Chapel) and it occurred to me that I could commit suicide. I kept thinking about it during Convo and was considering going back to my dorm to do it after Convo. I knew I wasn't really thinking straight so I kept dragging my feet. I went to the Rot (cafeteria) and had lunch. I texted my friend Sarah M. and asked her to pray for me because I was having suicidal thoughts. She texted me and said, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm at the Rot." She told me to meet her in the courtyard. She skipped her next class and we talked for a while. I was feeling a little better after talking to her and thought I would be okay by myself, but I guess she knew better than to leave me alone. She had another class coming up, but she told me to call my RA and tell her what was going on. Before I got a chance to call her, we ran into her in the hallway. I told her what was going on, and she took me off campus to get coffee. Afterwards she called the RD (resident director) and she wanted to talk to me. She asked if I would rather talk to her or go to Student Care (the on-campus counseling). I said I'd rather talk to her, so my RA and I met with the RD at her apartment on campus. The RD wasn't sure whether I could be safe, so she drove me to the other side of campus to go to Student Care.
When I got to Student Care, I met with two ladies who I assumed were counselors. One of them left for a minute, then came back in the room. Without any warning, two LUPD (Liberty University Police Department) officers came in the room and started asking me questions. They asked, on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely I was to attempt suicide. I said, "Maybe 2." (In reality the number was probably higher, but I was scared of what would happen if I said so.) They asked if I had a plan, and I told them my two possible plans. One officer said he needed to search my backpack. He pulled out a small, Indian-style bag and asked gruffly, "What is this?" "Make-up!" I said, exasperated. He unzipped the bag, and sure enough it was make-up! The officers showed no compassion and treated me like a burden and a criminal. They wouldn't listen to me and would misinterpret whatever I said. One officer told me, "Ok, you're going to the hospital. You have two options. You can either go voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntarily, you go in the ambulance and it won't show up on your record. Involuntarily, we handcuff you and take you in the police car." I thought about it for a minute and said, "Ok, I guess I'll go voluntarily." The officer went out and talked to my RA and RD in the waiting room. They both had plans and wouldn't be able to go to the hospital with me. Evidently the policy is that they will only take someone in an ambulance if someone on leadership can ride with them, so I would have to go in the police car. One of the officers left, and before the other officer took my phone away, I texted my friend Sarah C. and begged her to meet me at the ER. The officer handcuffed me from behind and paraded me through the back of North campus (aka Green Hall) and across the parking lot to the police car. I just looked down and tried to avoid eye contact with anyone who happened to be walking by.
The officer buckled me into the backseat and sped to the hospital, blasting country music in my ears. (This was before I liked country music.) It was raining, and I couldn't stop crying. I think the officer was a little annoyed with me and said at some point, "You're not being arrested." I didn't say anything. I knew I wasn't being arrested, but did it really matter if I was still handcuffed?
During that drive to the hospital, God comforted me with two verses I had memorized.
"When I am afraid, I will trust in you." Psalm 56:3 The other verse was one my mom taught me when I was little. "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble, he cares for those who trust in him." Nahum 1:7 I kept praying over and over that I wouldn't have a panic attack, that Sarah C. would be able to meet me at the hospital, and that I wouldn't have to spend the night at the hospital.
We got to the hospital around 4 p.m. The officer took me through a back door to the ER, so we didn't have to wait in the waiting room. We still had to wait in a room for a while. I finally asked the officer if Sarah C. could come in. He said, "If you really want." I begged, "Can she please?" A nurse came and got Sarah. Sarah tried to make small talk with the officer, but he just mumbled answers and obviously wasn't interested in talking.
The nurse made me go to the bathroom to do a urine sample. I have never in my life been so happy to do a urine sample because it meant being un-handcuffed and alone for a few minutes! I was scared that the officer would get mad and think I was trying to escape if I moved my hands the slightest bit in the handcuffs, so I had kept my hands very still. Since I was cold and not moving my hands, they turned purple. But my biggest complaint about handcuffs is that since I was handcuffed from behind, I couldn't wipe my eyes or nose. I had been crying a lot, so my face was a mess. I eventually got used to having tears dried on my face and glasses, but it was pretty humiliating having dried snot stuck to my face!
At some point a student nurse came in, who just happened to my friend Jess, who was my RA's younger sister. She gave me a glass of water and a blanket. I felt so much better just seeing someone I knew there!
The nurse took my vitals, and a doctor and psychiatrist came in and out, asking me a lot of questions. At some point the officer finally left, and two nurses admitted they were scared of him.
We did a lot of waiting, and Sarah kept me company and we talked about random things. Seeing her helped me calm down and kept me from completely freaking out or losing my mind. I am so thankful for her coming, and also for her husband Zack being a good sport and letting her spend a Friday night at the hospital with me at a moment's notice.
The doctor finally decided I didn't have to stay at the hospital, with the agreement that I'd follow our safety plan and have someone stay with me for the next 24 hours. God answered all of the prayers I prayed on the drive to the hospital. I didn't even have a panic attack, which was amazing because I had a lot of panic attacks back then.
I got out of the hospital around 7 or 7:30 pm. Sarah drove me to Jersey Mike's to get supper, then drove me back to the dorm. We talked to my RA and roommate to make sure someone could stay with me for the night. My roommate Jami said, "I'm not going anywhere!" So Sarah went home and I was able to sleep in my own bed in the dorm.
A couple days later I called a friend to talk about what had happened and she told me, "You can't just give up when things don't go your way." I almost can't blame her for saying that because that's a pretty common misconception about suicide--that it's selfish and that it's about giving up when you can't get your way. But it was still very hurtful. It wasn't just about not getting an internship I wanted; it was about feeling like I had lost my entire purpose for living.
About a week after all this happened, I had a follow-up meeting with the women from Student Care. It turned out that they were actually Conduct officers who normally handled disciplinary issues, but they were asked to talk to me because there were no counselors available at the time. They apologized for how things went and said they had discussed how things could have been handled differently next time. They said that my experience helped them learn what the problems were in how they handled students who were suicidal, which could help other students in the future.
I continued to be depressed, but I got through it eventually. I also had the stress of trying to figure out my internship and wondering if I would graduate on time since it was close to the deadline for summer internships. I ended up doing my internship in Romania in the summer of 2014. I worked with my good friend Estera and her family who have a conference center there. It was an awesome experience! Doing my internship late did contribute to graduating a year later than I had planned, but it worked out because my parents were thankfully willing to pay an extra year of tuition.
Even though this happened five years ago, it still affects me a lot. I thought that after that traumatic experience I would never consider suicide again, but suicidal thoughts don't stay away just because you want them to, and it was really only the beginning of a long struggle. I used to be obsessed with India, but now I try not to think about it much because it is just too painful. It has affected my relationship with God and made me question what I'm supposed to do with my life. I don't understand why God would seemingly make it very clear that he's leading me to India and then time after time, not let me go. The health problems I've had for the past few years are also an obstacle to going overseas, but that's a whole different story.
There are a lot of things I don't understand, but my motto after this became, "When dreams die, keep living." I try to find reasons to keep living, even when it seems that some of those reasons have been lost. This experience has also been a hard way of learning that my hope needs to be in God, not anything else--not even in a dream of serving God.
So that's the long story. (And thank you to anyone who read the whole thing!) I think it's easier to understand me and some of my life choices when you know the whole story.
