The Truth

More than twenty years ago, when I was eighteen, I was depressed and wanted to end my life.

That is a story for another essay.

But I remember hearing a statistic that frightened me—that people who have been suicidal once are at a much higher risk of returning there.

I remember making myself a promise.

I will not become that statistic.

There are other statistics I’d much rather belong to. The people who only walked through that valley once. The people who kept choosing tomorrow.

Or, if we’re making up statistics, the people who eat McDonald’s fries every day and are somehow happier because of it.

I’ve always been strangely competitive with myself. So when I made that promise, I meant it.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve stayed in therapy when I needed it. I’ve taken medication when it helped. I’ve kept writing, learning, processing, talking, praying, and paying attention to the warning signs my own mind and body give me. I’ve had seasons of depression. I’ve had hard months. But I never returned to believing the world would be better without me in it.

Whenever I felt myself drifting toward that edge, I fought like hell to come back.

The closest I came was about a month after my breakup.

I was driving when a thought crossed my mind.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

Then another one followed.

No one wants me here.

That thought scared me.

Not because I believed it.

But because I recognized it.

It had been more than twenty years since my mind had whispered something like that to me, and I was furious. Furious that one person’s rejection had managed to drag me back toward a place I had worked so hard to leave behind.

So I started talking back.

We don’t do this, Maggie.

We don’t let one person’s rejection decide our worth.

We don’t ignore the people who are clearly fighting to keep us here.

We don’t decide when God is finished with us.

Only God decides that.

Every time the lie returned, I answered it with the truth.

As you probably know by now, I spend a lot of time listening to worship music in my car. The volume is usually far too loud, and I sing with enough enthusiasm that I sound like I’ve had laryngitis by the time I get to work.

One morning I heard the song The Truth by Megan Woods.

The first few times I heard it, I cried.

The truth is I am my Father’s child
I make Him proud and I make Him smile
I was made in the image of a perfect King
He looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing
The truth is I am truly loved
By a God who is good when I am not good enough
I don’t belong to the lies
I belong to You.
And that’s the truth.

Every line seemed to find a different wound.

“I am my Father’s child.”

The little girl who lost her dad heard that.

“I make Him proud.”

The woman who still wonders if she’s enough heard that.

“I am truly loved.”

The heart that felt rejected heard that.

“I don’t belong to the lies.”

The anxious mind heard that.

“I belong to You.”

The lonely soul heard that.

Eventually I stopped crying when I heard that song.

Not because life had changed.

Because I had.

Those lyrics stopped sounding like wishes.

They started sounding like truth.

The truth is that you are loved.

The truth is that you belong.

The truth is that you are not a burden.

The truth is that rejection does not get the final word.

The truth is that God is not finished with you.

And if you are reading this today wondering whether you still matter…

You do.

Please stay.