I Want To Live!

As a young man, I struggled with a desire to die.

The New England weather was too much for my lungs leaving me in a wake of asthma attacks and pneumonia. My skin suffered from eczema on most of my extremities that made my skin crack, peel and bleed. My eyes had dark circles, a natural complexion, only worsened because of stress and anxiety. Unfortunately, it drew people’s attention to my appearance. I’d been asked for drugs or if I’d been abused. I was given the nick name panda eyes. I sunk deeper into depression and self-pity.

But all this discomfort seemed superficial to the longing of connecting with my father. As child, there was a brief relationship centered on activities, but as I grew older his silence and dissonant caused any father-son relationship to break free from its moorings. I was adrift and lost. Fortunately, my relationship with my mom and siblings was strong as we depended on each other in those difficult years. At that time, God was the center in all we did as a family giving us strength and a measure of hope.

Still the hunger for a father grew stronger and threatened to swallow me. One late night, I found myself driving to the nearest city where I searched for a relationship. While the details of that particular night so long ago are lost, there is one thing that I recall so vividly. I remember saying aloud as I drove along I-95, “I want to die!”

How could I have known in that moment that I agreed with a dark, spiritual power? The spirit of death oppressed and tormented me for years until God brought deliverance some 25 years later.

In 2009 out of the depths of my heart there was a cry to live. This is when I received a particular medical report greatly impacting my life.

Mark 10:45 says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (NIV) For me to live again was to acknowledge that Jesus held the power to life alone. He is my ransom from this grave, this bondage to death.

For someone today, it’s time to say goodbye to a fabricated life layered by well crafted lies. Or a life piece together in order to survive, just to get by. Say goodbye to a life others think you should lead regardless to what you think or capable of doing.

Ask the Lord to give you a desire to live again. Only He can stir to life again a heart that has long stopped beating because of dreams and desires that have died and with it, any hope of a resurrection.

The fall of 2013 will mark four years that God has healed me of asthma. My father and I have been writing and calling each over the past 2 - 3 years. God can bring the dead back to life! Thank you, my Jesus!