I Was Saved from Suicide

BECAUSE of my interracial common-law marriage, my parents disowned me, with my father vowing to take my life if he ever saw me again. I was caught between two worlds, neither of which accepted me, and I refused to make a choice. I despised this world of suffering and hatred and I tried everything to change it​—communism, hippie way of life, women’s liberation, fighting for what I thought was right. Then I began to develop a hate for God as he is taught by the churches. I decided that even if I did have to burn in a fiery hell, I would not serve that kind of God.

But after two years of fighting this system and its god, my spirit broke. I decided to take my life. One last time I prayed to a God I did not know. In my ignorance I told God that if he cared anything about me he had better do something before two o’clock that day, or I would take my life. And completely forgetting that prayer, I began to prepare to do just that.

Before two o’clock one of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked at my door. This particular Witness had come to my house so many times I couldn’t count them all. Always she found me sleeping. I always took her literature but I also let my contempt show for her God. This day when she came I yelled at her in an angry and abusive manner. When she began to tell me about the God she worshiped, however, for the first time I began to listen. She explained that it was not God’s will to have a rotten world filled with starving people and deformed children. Her words gave me a ray of hope, and I began to study the Bible with her. Shortly thereafter I dedicated my life to Jehovah and got baptized.

The knowledge that this system will end, and that there is a God who is all the things that he says he is, has brought me a peace of mind and heart that I had not experienced since I was a young child. Jehovah has blessed my now-legal marriage with two fine sons. And in Jehovah’s organization there are friends who really love me.

But none of these blessings​—and there are many more—​would be possible without the life I have now. If Jehovah had not heard my prayer, and if that dear Witness had not made that return visit on me, I would be dead. But I am not, and this life belongs to Jehovah until time indefinite.​—Contributed.