The doctors were sure if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t wake up.
It was too late to pump my stomach. Half a bottle of Excedrin. They were about to insert the tube down my throat. Instead they fed me liquid charcoal to neutralize the acid. My vomit was the color of midnight, of tar.
I waited. I fell asleep.
You can feel death, you know. It’s like someone is unraveling a thread at the back of your skull, like sinking into yourself. My legs felt like they were dangling in water. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. It would’ve been so easy to keep falling, to sink, to follow the thread to the bottom.
But in that moment, hanging over the abyss — there it was. Not some neon sign or some grand eloquent entrance, not a voice from the rafters, but a simple expression of something beyond this world.
“You’re not done yet. You have more. You have Me.”
I woke up. I was Baker Act’ed into a mental hospital. I wore someone else’s clothes. A man with a clipboard asked me questions about my father. A patient in the next room pulled the fire alarm and tried to jump out the window. Another patient tried to fight me. I was let out after regaining “social acceptability.” I lost thirteen pounds in three days and had roomed with others who had far worse problems than I.
Back into the sunlight, I suddenly didn’t want to waste my life anymore. I couldn’t stand the thought of having died in that hospital bed.
I wanted to believe it all had meaning,
that a purpose awaited me,
that I was made to save a corner of this universe,
that I am much more than what I feel.
It took inches before death to find the beginning of trusting Him. Maybe part of trusting God was trusting that He might actually like me — not because of what I could do, but simply because I was breathing the air He had whispered into my lungs.
I thought of the verse: It does not profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul. If this is true, it means your soul and mine has infinitely more value to God than the whole world. For every person who is tired of living, God says,
You’re not done yet.
You have more.
You have Me.
– J.S. | Mad About God
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain 
Your blog is very similar to what a friend unknowingly taught me; G-d is always open to being known more, and there’s always more to know.
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Right on. Thank you my friend.
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Thank you for sharing this. There is so much many Christians just won’t talk about… and they should. One thing that I have a hard time with is falseness in others (I know, how ungraceful of me!) People fear that if anyone knows they are human they will be rejected. I wish we could all just be real for a change!
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I totally agree. I think on one hand, forced authenticity and hijacking words like “struggle” as a cover for selfishness can’t work. On the other hand, I think wearing the smile-mask is even worse. There’s that place where our transparency happens without hardly trying. From what I know, it’s when people are unafraid to be themselves, and at the same time not trying to “be myself” as a contest to look real. It’s rare to find such a place, but they exist.
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I have two people that I can be real with. And that is, sadly, two more than most people have…
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I needed this. Thanks.
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Thank you, Lemuel. Let me know how I can pray for you.
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I NEEDED this. So much. Your honesty is quickly becoming a beacon of hope for me.
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Thank you, Marni. As I’ve heard before: honesty is not just the best policy, but the only policy.
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I love your word picture – God loved me.”simply because I was breathing the air he whispered into my lungs.”
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Thank you Oneta. It might be a little cliche, but such truths often are. 🙂
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