Hi sweet friends! I am so glad you are back! Today, I am sharing a story of hope, freedom, and redemption. Colbie is one of my best friends and she is the most joyful person I know. It breaks my heart to know the pain that Colbie faced in high school, but I know that this is a story that needs to be shared.
Hi friends,
I would love to start by saying a huge thank you to Mallory Brooke, the leader and champion of The Happy Heart Project. I can tell you, the reader, from personal experience and a friendship of 16 years (yes, you read that right) that this woman is the real deal. Everything she advocates for she truly lives out in her daily life. I am a product of friendship with her and because of it my life is marked with so much kindness and joy. The Happy Heart Project, this blog, and all that it entails WILL NOT be a waste of your time. In fact, I deeply believe that if you choose to partner in her efforts, you will be blessed in result of it. So thank you, Mal for fighting for something well worth fighting for-it is an honor to be your friend and to share my story with the readers of The Happy Heart Project.
My name is Colbie Jo and I am a 22-year-old graduate from Texas A&M University really just trying to figure out what this whole adult thing is like. I always called college life “adulting” so I have lovingly named post-grad life “adulting adulting” because it is the real deal. It all hit me on Martin Luther King Jr Day when all of my roommates slept in because they did not have class, and I went about my day to work, CrossFit, etc. because “adulting adulting” doesn’t stop, or at least it hasn’t yet in the past two months. Anyways, I am currently a nanny for an adorable family, volunteer in the Missions Department at my church, and am a student (can’t escape it, let’s be real) in a program at my church called Antioch Discipleship School. I am in a very sweet season of life, but it has not always been this way. In fact, just four-five short years ago I was walking a very dark and lonely road.
Early in my high school career, I walked into a deep state of depression and found myself completely trapped in the grips of pain and suicide. How many of you have heard the phrase that “suicide is not biased”? Well, it’s true. The darkness of suicide is hovering over many individuals all around us and the scariest part is that we actually believe that there is no way to know that this is the reality of so many. I am a firm believer that, like Mallory advocates in The Happy Heart Project, if we create conversations surrounding suicide and are educated on the warning signs, we would stop being reactive to this silent epidemic and start being proactive. I was incredibly involved in school, played multiple sports, had lots of friends, and did things within my community. On the inside, though, I was a walking plea for help because I secretly wanted to end my life. My grades slipped, I slept a lot more, became disinterested in lots of things, and interested in all the wrong things. My life became a very slippery slope. It was friends like Mallory that were the kindness I needed in my life to keep choosing life. My senior year of High School, I found the light. After years of running in circles of darkness, confusion, and disarray, in April of 2016 I met Jesus. I knew that I had found myself in a place that I could not get out of on my own. I knew that something had to change or I would lose my life. I knew that it was time to bring the darkness into the light. Once I chose to speak up, the darkness of suicide lost its grip on me.
It has been years since that evening in April and to this day, I know that my freedom is directly correlated to the power of God first and foremost, and also the boldness that welled up within me to voice that pain I had been dealing with for years. In the book of Ephesians 5:11-13 in the Bible it says “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them...when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.”
Did you know that if we all took the charge to expose the darkness of suicide, it will inevitably lose its power??!!!??
My brokenness was met by the power, grace, and redemptive person that is Jesus and ever since that moment I have walked toward healing instead of darkness. Am I perfect? Nope. Will I ever be perfect? Nope. But my goal is Jesus, not perfection.
It is my joy and honor to partner with The Happy Heart Project because I know there are many, many stories like mine but unfortunately most of them are still in the grips of darkness, wearing a smile yet internally crying out for help. May we all be a people who expose the darkness of suicide, let light shine through our lives, and fight to see this silent epidemic come to an end. It does not take a college degree or being a Mental Health Professional to speak on this topic (though thank You, God, that there are people dedicating their professions to this important topic), it takes kindness, joy, and the willingness to talk about the things that are hard to talk about.
Who knows where I would be had I never met Jesus or never spoken up about the pain I was suffering on the inside. Let’s link arms and be a people who ensure that no one has to fight this fight alone - let’s be exposers of the darkness of suicide and carriers of the Light of Hope.
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