God Found her When She Wanted to Disappear

“I really had this deep wounding of feeling that there was something really wrong with me and that, ultimately, I was alone,” Hope Donithan said while thinking back on her youth. “’Why are you really here? Do you even have a purpose?  You should just end your life.’ I was hopeless.”

“I grew up in a household that definitely was Christian,” Hope said. “I got baptized around six. Growing up, I never questioned whether God was real. But I think it felt kind of far off to me. I never really experienced the love that people talked about.”

“From a young age I experienced rejection,” Hope said. “There was this kid, just in a moment where we were playing around, and he told me, ‘No one's ever going to love you.’ That, I think, really planted the seed inside of my heart as a child that people didn’t want to be around me, and maybe, if that's true, no one would ever love me. And if this is being said by people around me then, I don’t know, maybe God doesn’t love me.’”

“I also started having health issues,” Hope said. “ I was in and out of doctor's offices, sometimes even hospitals, just with random things. Eventually they found some autoimmune disorders. So, it really made me begin to feel like, ‘Wow, I’m being rejected, I'm experiencing this sorrow and depression, and I'm also dealing with these illnesses.’ It did make me feel that God was far away. That maybe He didn’t see me or care to change the situations that were happening.”

“Then those monologues began to be even more extreme to, ‘No one would miss you if you were gone,’” Hope said. “Which, ultimately led me to start to create suicide plans in my head.”

“In my bathroom one day, with it locked, feeling so much hopelessness that I had the razor blades,” Hope said. “’I don't want to be here anymore.’ Just crying, just wanting the sorrow to stop.”

“All of a sudden this presence entered my bathroom,” Hope said. “It was like an inner kind of voice in my head that wasn't my own. And it just said, ‘Hope, don't do it. I love you, and I made you for a purpose.’ I knew that voice was Jesus. It was like this rush of love and peace. I felt so seen in that moment. He actually did care whether I was here and, whether I chose to actually continue my life. I felt a love and a peace that I'd been desiring. It didn't matter to me if I didn't have that many friends anymore because I had Jesus.”

“I actually began to read the Bible,” Hope said. “Began to want to be at church. Got plugged in to serving. I'm very passionate now about reaching the next generation with the love of Jesus. So, that's what's led me to the work I'm doing now as a missionary. I've even had moments of suicide intervention for students.”

“I really did find a joy and a purpose that really made me feel loved and accepted,” Hope said. “Yes, I've experienced rejection. I've experienced moments of feeling sadness, but never to that extent where I would ever question my life again. I feel so confident in the love of God and His purpose and plan for my life that it wouldn’t move me and it wouldn’t shake me, because I just know that God is good. I now have a history of seeing His faithfulness in my life.”

“I would want to share with anyone that's experiencing suicidal ideation, though you might feel that those feelings of hopelessness or despair, the voices are telling you that you don't have a future, that your life is not worth anything and that you should end it – that voice isn't true,” Hope said. “There's a better voice speaking to you. It's the voice of Jesus. And he's saying, just like he said to me that day in the bathroom, I love you. Don't do it. I have a purpose and a plan for your life.”