When I was a teenager I began to suffer from depression, which led to self harm and suicidal thoughts. I thought I didn’t fit in with society, I didn’t feel emotion aside from rage and anger, I was numb. I would experience seeing shadowy figures out the corner of me eye, crawling on my ceiling – never able to catch them when I look. I would experience a feeling where it felt like the walls of my room were closing in around me and I would have to wait for this sinking feeling to hit “rock bottom” before it would start to lift. I honestly felt like I was going crazy, and I couldn’t communicate this to people.

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My sister and I were raised Christian by our parents. As a child I definitely believed, but after life threw a few very damaging curveballs in the form of my parents divorce, religion became a poor excuse for control and full of hypocrites. How could a person who claims their life has been transformed by an almighty creator run off and have an affair with another man? This single action tore my family apart, destroyed friendships, upturned lives, caused financial jeopardy, displaced people over the country and people are still slowly healing from these deep wounds more than a decade later.

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So religion, to me was suddenly “It’s ok if it works for you, but that’s not really ‘my thing'”, I would tell people. Whatever makes them feel better about life. 

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Of course I had, on occasion, thought about the existence of God and the absurdity of suffering that occurs in the world as a major objection to engaging with it. It’s not like I hadn’t tried praying before you know – on the off chance something would turn around for the better? I tried something called “Black Magic” one time, which I had read about online.

None of the above did anything except make me feel stupid.

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I began to shut people out, I didn’t want to socialise. In fact, I didn’t want to be “me”, so I played games that allowed me to pretend to be other people. When that wasn’t enough, I began to play on a World of Warcraft Roleplaying Private Server – almost the epitome of living life as someone else. Because most of the other players were in the United States, I began to stay up all night playing and sleep all day. I barely left my room. On the occasions I would go out to socialise with a friend – I would shower & get ready and pretend like everything was normal, like life was fine.

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One particular morning around 4am I heard a voice in my head tell me “it’s time to kill myself”. My bedroom was on the ground floor, so I snuck out the window and walked to the nearest bridge that overlooked train tracks. I prepared to throw myself over the short wall, thinking to myself that life would be better for everyone if I was dead and gone.

Just as I was about to lean over and let gravity do the work, that feeling of “it’s time to kill yourself tonight” just stopped. I still wanted to die, but that internal driving force to do it tonight had evaporated. I wasn’t sad or upset, I didn’t really feel anything at all. It was like a cold logical decision and then something just changed. So I walked home, climbed back into my room and went to bed.

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A few months later my mother reminded me I had agreed to go camping with her in the summer (which had now promptly arrived). After being called out on this point, and mainly just to shut her up, I reluctantly went. What I had forgotten was that this wasn’t regular camping, rather a Christian event called “Faith Camp” where believers from all around the world and country travelled to Peterborough Show Ground for a week. Overthe 7 day period people would worship together, attend seminars, meet new people etc. 

Someone had organised in such a way that a church would “host” a patch of ground (which were divided by pathways so coneveniently segmented into sections) and you would search for one from your local area so you could meet people from your area.

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Oh no. Christians? 7 days of Christians!? This was a literal worst case scenario. Needless to say I didn’t want to be there.

So as soon as we got there (arriving in the evening of the Sunday) my hood was up, my earphones were in, and the world was shut out.

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Given the choice between attending the youth program or the adult seminar, at the age of 19 I was insulted to even be thought of as a youth, so again, reluctantly I went with my mother to the main seminar which was pretty much as I had expected. An old man on a stage talking about something I didn’t understand or care about.

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The building looked like a large warhouse / hangar with a few thousand people sat on foldable black chairs. An impressive stage with all the lighting, rigging and screens were up so people from the back could see.

We were sat at the back. Again, hood up, headphones in, world out. The volume was up sufficiently to drown out everything and I sat there looking forward to having this over and done with.

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Then something weird happened… 

In my minds eye I could see a man pounding on a door and I was stood behind it.
I would like to be able to say that I thought I was hallucinating or something… But the truth is I knew exactly who this man was. I was distinctly aware that this was Jesus and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

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He kept pounding on the door saying “Joshua (my name) let me in.”
“Absolutely not.” I wanted NOTHING to do with this.
“Joshua let me in.” He continued, raising his voice slightly. There was an urgency, concern, and authority in his voice and also a desperation in ensuring he got to me, like a first responder.
“No, leave me alone.”
“Joshua let me in.”
“No, go away.”
“Joshua let me in.”

At this point I wish I could say that I thought I was ‘imagining’ it. But I would be lying.

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This continued and in the end I just said “fine”, as though in defeat.

In that moment it was like I was given a hug that broke through all my internal barriers and I just broke down crying – the first time I had cried in years. There was just overwhelming love and acceptance that I could tangibly feel and I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that I had said yes to Jesus, and this strange, wonderful, slightly confusing moment had just taken place.

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During this time the man on stage had stopped talking and the band was playing music and people were stood up worshipping, singing songs, praying and celebrating. I was still sat down at the back.

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After the speaker returned on stage, I started to pay attention to what was being said. I didn’t really understand it because he was using technical terminology. However there was a point during the talk where young people of a certain age group, my age group, were invited down to the front. The speaker wanted to pray for us. This was a scary thing, and I froze in my chair. On one hand, internally I wanted to go? Why? I had so many questions all of a sudden.

But on the other hand, there are so many people? And they want us to go to the front of the stage? Why?

All of this was happening in an instant, my mind racing, conflicted, intrigued yet afraid.

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“Run towards God.” the speaker said.

“Fine.” I said to myself. And in that moment, I made a decision internally to ‘run towards God’. So I stood up and I sprinted as fast as I could to the front with some unknown courage that had just appeared in me. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but all I knew was that this was all suddenly real.

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And of course… I was the first one on stage. Of course I was. But I was there now. I had made that commitment. We were prayed for and then we returned to our seats.

The rest of the evening was full of prayer and singing of which I was still not fully understanding and tried my best to join in, but just mostly cried as I was still feeling this love internally. We returned to our tents after it had finished.

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Then something strange happened. After things had settled and all were sleeping, I found myself spiralling down internally. “I don’t deserve this.” “I’m worthless.” “Nothing good should ever happen to me.” “I’m a stain on the earth.” “How could anyone love me?”
I began to text my mum some of these things, and ended up falling asleep.

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The next morning something felt differently inside. The world seemed brighter?
I suddenly realised I no longer wanted to kill myself.
Then I realised I was feeling… Something? This would turn out to be happiness.
Then I realised I couldn’t stop smiling.
And then finally I realised I simply no longer felt the weight of depression in me, that constant anchor that felt like it was chained to my neck.
For the first time in a long time I was finally free from mental health problems.

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I have no idea why this strange set of events happened the way they did, but since that day it has never returned. For all intents and purposes, I’m free from it.

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I met a very beautiful woman at Faith Camp shortly after we got there. It turned out she only lived 2 miles away and we were camping on the same plot of land…
We would go on to spend every day of the rest of summer together, instantly becoming the best of friends.
We married each other on 27th July 2019.

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At first I had changed so much that my entire family thought I was faking it because of how contrast I was after, to before I went. They have since recanted on this and apologised! 😂

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In the following years I would later find out that on the night I was going to commit suicide, my mother had been woken up by God and began fervently praying for me. It is my belief that the only reason I didn’t die that night was because of this.

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So the reason I believe in Jesus isn’t because someone was trying to sell me religion, or shove a view point down my throat. It is simply because I had a very personal experience that changed and transformed me and I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for God. Even today I still continue to learn about the teachings of Jesus and try my best to apply them in life.

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If this is something that you would like to know more about, or want for yourself I have written a little extra below for you.