by Nick Vujicic
A month after the friend’s second suicide attempt, I happened to speak at their school.
“I was sitting next to her, and she did not take her eyes off you the whole time. What you were saying must have clicked for her, because during your talk she smiled a real smile, the first one in so long,” Kate reported in her e-mail. “After we finished, she insisted on seeing you and giving you a hug, which she did. After you left that night, she said that you had started to restore her faith in God.”
Kate added that this marked the beginning of her friend’s return from despair and self-harm. She wrote to thank me for “giving me back my best friend,” but in truth, Kate’s loyalty and devotion to her friend made the restoration of their friendship possible.
Sometimes it won’t be easy to stand by a friend or loved one who is dealing with despair or depression. Your loyalty will be tested. You may feel hurt, slighted, or abandoned. I would never suggest that you allow someone to mistreat you. If that happens, maintain a safe distance, but do whatever you can to help. That may mean simply being there for those who are hurting, listening to them when they are willing to talk about their concerns, and assuring them that they are loved and valued by reminding them that other people care about them.
If you sense that someone is more troubled than you are equipped to handle, you should contact a guidance counselor, a trusted clergy member, or a medical or mental health professional and seek his or her advice on what to do.
Most communities have mental health and suicide hotlines you can call for advice, and there are many resources online, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org), the Self-Injury Foundation (www.selfinjuryfoundation.org), and S.A.F.E. Alternatives (www.selfinjury.com). You can find them by searching online for mental health advice, suicide, self-harm, and psychiatric counseling services.
REACH OUT
I strongly advise you to consult professionals and experts in your efforts to help someone in danger of self-harm, but if the person wants to talk with you, please don’t miss the opportunity to reach out. Not long ago, I spoke at a church and afterward I just wanted to go home. I was worn out and hungry, and it was freezing outside. We were heading to the car when I saw a young woman sitting outdoors in the cold. Her head was down and it appeared she’d been crying. I craved food, warmth, and rest, but God touched my heart and told me to go to her.
Natalie had been overwhelmed with thoughts of suicide. Only fourteen years old, she’d run away from home and traveled by hitchhiking. A stranger had dropped her off outside the church. Maybe it was a coincidence that I happened to be speaking there, or maybe once again God revealed His plan for not allowing me to end my life many years before.
Natalie poured out her heart to me. She felt her life had no meaning. She was so distraught she told me she intended to commit suicide that very night. I did not judge her or try to solve her problems. Instead, I shared my own story of feeling frustrations and pain as a boy. I told her that after I had turned my life over to Christ, He had revealed my path and purpose over time. I told her that I had once felt just as she did, but my life had completely turned around.
My words touched her. Natalie said she’d desperately needed to talk to someone who understood what she was going through without judging or condemning her. I told her there were ways to turn her sorrows into joy, just as I had done. I prayed with her. The pastor and the church staff counseled her and gave her the assistance she needed to return to her parents and a better life.
Today, Natalie is free of any urge to harm herself or to take her life. We tell her story in my video Passing on the Torch at the Life Without Limbs website. You can imagine how grateful I am that I did not simply get into our vehicle and go home that night. God led Natalie to me so that I could put my faith into action and encourage her to do the same. If you encounter someone who is in obvious distress, please find a way to help or guide him or her toward someone who can. You, too, can be a miracle for someone. What a blessing that is!
I am concerned that there are many others like Natalie who are not being helped. There is a lost generation out there in danger of harming themselves because they have no hope and no faith to put into action. Nearly three out of every five young Christians (59 percent) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age fifteen, according to research by the Barna Group.
I want to help turn back that tide. The Lord has given me an even greater passion for reaching out to young people in need. I have a renewed commitment to challenge my generation to be on fire for the Lord Jesus Christ and to share my passion for Him. My goal is to share a hope that ignites at least one person each day, then that person can ignite another and another and another until the world is illuminated with His glorious light. I call this “passing the torch.”
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.… Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” I believe with all my heart that this is possible, and I hope you will never miss an opportunity to help a person in need.
Please understand, too, that sometimes the people who may appear to be hard cases—hostile to authority and difficult to reach—are those who most need your help. Jesus didn’t minister to the rich and the righteous; He sought out the most wretched criminals and impoverished sinners and offered them salvation. When I speak in schools and even prisons, often those who respond to my message with the greatest emotion are those who at first look like they’d rather be anywhere but listening to this strange-looking guy who wants to talk about God.
Gina appeared to be a teen who didn’t want help, even though she needed it desperately. Gina told me her story in a touching e-mail, describing a childhood of abuse and conflict. “My heart was cold, surrounded by a wall to keep everything out,” she wrote. She began cutting and bruising herself at the age of twelve.
“Satan was whispering in my ear, telling me that pain was the only thing real. I really did believe it and tried to kill the pain inside with a pain I thought I could control,” she wrote. “I tried to kill myself four times, but failed. I guess God wasn’t ready to let me off the hook that easy.”
Despite her tough attitude and emotional problems, Gina remained in her church youth group, which proved to be a great blessing, because that is how I reached her. I was invited to speak at her church.
“When you started to speak, I sort of listened but tried not to let myself get involved. It was impossible,” she wrote. “Everything else faded away, and there you were, telling me that God loves me, telling me that I have a purpose, telling me that I can use my circumstances for Him, telling me that I’m beautiful.”
My message that day, like most, was very simple and came straight from the Bible, but this fifteen-year-old took it to heart.
“When you said that being perfect on the outside doesn’t mean anything if you’re broken on the inside, I think my wall started crumbling,” Gina wrote. “After that, everything you said knocked another brick off that wall, until I was sitting there, my defenses down, tears pouring down my face, and I was changed. When I prayed, my chains fell off and I felt free.”
Gina said that my simple words gave her hope.
“Suddenly, I could do it; I could live; I had a reason to, because I’m special.… It might have just been another day in your life. But to me it was another day I didn’t give up, and more important, the first day in a long time that I didn’t want to,” she wrote. “You reached out to me, not touching my hand with yours, but touching my heart with yours and with the love of my Daddy. My Daddy, the Daddy who will never hurt me or cause me pain. The Daddy who will love me for who I am, despite all my faults and flaws.”
Gina is a realist who has been through some very difficult experiences, but I love that she is now putting her faith into action one day at a time with hope in her heart.
“I’m by no means done with the crap in my life, but it’s a start in the r
ight direction,” she wrote. “With time I hope that I can learn to use my testimony like you do, to reach hurting people and let them know that they are not alone and that there is a purpose, that they are loved. You handed me one of the greatest things of all. HOPE.”
If you are hurting like Gina was, please take her words into your heart and put your own faith in action. If you know someone in emotional pain who is dealing with self-destructive thoughts, reach out to them. Even a simple message like mine can give them hope for better days, and you may save the life of one of God’s children.
Here are some resources that you might find helpful for yourself or someone else:
• Kids Under Twenty One (KUTO; www.kuto.org) is a resource for teens provided by teens. KUTO offers crisis prevention, suicide intervention, and support to the community through awareness education and outreach.
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK [1-800-273-8255]; www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org) is a toll-free, twenty-four-hour suicide prevention service. Callers will be routed to a crisis center in their area. With more than 130 crisis centers across the country, the mission is to provide immediate assistance to anyone seeking mental health services. Call for yourself or for someone you care about. Calls are free and confidential.
• Teen Line (1-310-855-HOPE [1-310-855-4673] or 1-800-TLC-TEEN [1-800-852-8336]; text “TEEN” to 839863; www.teenlineonline.org) helps teens address their problems through a confidential peer hotline and community outreach program. Open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. (PST) every night.
• ULifeline (www.ulifeline.org) is an anonymous, confidential, online resource center for college students seeking information regarding mental health and suicide prevention.
• CrisisLink (1-703-527-4077; 1-800-237-TALK [1-800-237-8255], National Suicide Prevention Line; and 1-800-SUICIDE [1-800-784-2433]; www.crisislink.org) was created to save lives and prevent tragedies. It offers support to individuals facing life crises, trauma, and suicide and provides information, education, and links to community resources to empower people to help themselves.
SEVEN
Fighting Injustice
ONE OF THE GREAT JOYS OF MY LIFE IS VISITING WITH MY FRIEND DANIEL Martinez. I described in Life Without Limits how Chris and Patty Martinez of Long Beach brought their nineteen-month-old boy to a church where I was speaking in 2008. They were seated far back in the crowd, but Chris held little Daniel in the air so I could see that this precious child was born just as I was, with neither arms nor legs.
At that point Daniel was the first person I’d met who looked just like me. Talk about an emotional moment! I felt an immediate bond with the Martinez family. I couldn’t wait to meet privately with them to give them encouragement and to share my experiences. My joy was compounded when my parents arrived from Australia a few days later, and they, too, quickly bonded with Daniel, Chris, and Patty.
Since then we have stayed in touch. Daniel has proven to be even more fearless and adventurous than I was as a child. God put me in his life to give him the role model that I never had, and I feel blessed whenever we get together. So you can imagine my concern when the Martinezes told me just a few months ago that Daniel, now a first-grader, was having trouble because of bullying from schoolmates.
This upsetting news hit hard and it hit home. No matter where I travel in the world—China, Chile, Australia, India, Brazil, Canada—young people tell me stories of being bullied, ridiculed, and harassed in school, on playgrounds or buses, and increasingly online. Nearly every day we hear a new report of a young person somewhere who has committed suicide or lashed out violently after being relentlessly bullied.
When I address school groups, I am often asked to speak out against bullying and to call for an end to it. Of course, this is a very personal issue for me. Bullies targeted me often in my early school days. By middle school I had many friends, but even that didn’t stop the hurtful comments and meanspirited teasing.
There was one particular taunter, an older kid named Andrew, who really got to me when I was thirteen by yelling something crude at me every time he saw me. There is no delicate way to describe what he would say to me. Day after day, he’d walk by me and shout out, “Nick has no ——!”
It’s typical of the crass comments some guys make to one another, and I might have been able to laugh it off if he’d only said it once. But this bloke was relentless. It was bad enough to be missing my arms and legs. Now I had this yammering dodo falsely demeaning my manhood at an age when young men are sensitive about such things. It didn’t help that sometimes a few of his friends snickered too, making me feel even worse. Most of the other kids did nothing, which also bothered me. You’d think someone would have told this jerk to shut up, but no one did, and that hurt and angered me even more.
You should never allow a bully to make you feel badly about yourself. But I know that is easier said than done. Words can hurt even if you know they are untrue and just meant to get under your skin. This is especially true when you are confronted time after time in front of your classmates and friends—and they do nothing to stop it.
I always tell people that I’m armless but not harmless. There was a bully in grade school who pushed me too far, and I bloodied his nose by hammering him with my forehead. He was bigger than I, but my high school bully was much, much bigger than I. (By the way, Andrew is not his real name. So my Aussie friends needn’t bother trying to track him down.)
Back then I was not aware of how widespread bullying was or how serious it could be. I just knew that hearing Andrew’s taunts at least once a day was tying my stomach in knots and making me a wreck. After about two weeks of this verbal abuse, Andrew and his insults were the first things I thought of upon waking each morning. I dreaded school. I found myself avoiding him, which made me late for class. I couldn’t think straight half the time. I was either worrying about running into Andrew or feeling angry and hurt about the latest taunt he had yelled out in the corridor.
Some of my older friends offered to beat him up, but I didn’t want to hurt this yahoo; I just wanted to shut him up. Finally I decided to confront him. I took the energy from my anger and fear and used it to power my wheelchair right up to him one day in the hallway after he’d shouted out his usual insult and embarrassed me once again.
Andrew looked even bigger at close range. This was one of those times that I wished my wheelchair was equipped with a battering ram, or at least a power hose. Still, I could see that he was surprised at my gutsy move.
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?” he replied.
“Why do you tease me and say that?” I asked.
“Does it offend you?”
“Yeah, it hurts me every time you say it.”
“I didn’t realize that, man. I was just kidding around. I’m sorry.”
His apology seemed genuine, so I accepted and we shook hands.
Just kidding!
In truth, I did say, “I forgive you,” and that seemed to surprise him.
He never bothered me again. I’m sure Andrew didn’t think of himself as a bully. Often, bullies don’t. They think they are just kidding or teasing or trying to be funny. Sometimes people don’t realize their words are hurtful.
But when they are, they need to stop or be stopped.
Andrew may have been one of those people who finds it difficult relating to someone with a disability. Maybe he tried to bridge the perceived gap between normal (him) and different (me) by teasing me. Whatever his reason, Andrew was hurting me and ruining my school days with his thoughtless remarks.
Those old feelings came back and caused an ache like old wounds reopened when Daniel’s parents told me that he was being bullied in grade school. He and I are so much alike, not just physically, but temperamentally too. Daniel is a gregarious, fun-loving lad, and I knew that being bullied would steal his joy and trigger insecurities just as it had done to me.
So I offered to come to his school and talk to the students about
the dangers and cruelty of bullying. The school officials rallied around the idea. They had me speak to all the classes from kindergarten through the fifth grade, and I was pleased to hear that the school staffers were doing whatever they could to help. They had Daniel speak to all the students about what he can and cannot do, how he does certain tasks, and what his life is like without arms or legs.
Daniel Day was a slam dunk. I made it clear to everyone at his school that I was Daniel’s good friend and biggest booster and that I would take it personally if anyone ever bullied him again. I told them to be cool, not cruel. Beyond that, I spoke about the dangers and cruelty of bullying from my perspective and from a global view. I also talked about the impact of bullying on the victims and ways to recognize when someone is being bullied, and I encouraged all the students to speak out and act out to stop bullying in their communities.
A GLOBAL PROBLEM
My personal experiences with bullying did not end in childhood. Just recently I was traveling with friends and enjoying a swim at our hotel when an obviously drunk guy made loud and crude comments to me. It’s a common misconception that bullying is a kid’s problem. Tell that to the female police officer teased, intimidated, and shunned by her male coworkers. Or the elderly gentleman who lives in fear of the teens terrorizing his apartment complex. Or the teenager whose Facebook page is bombarded with crude and hurtful comments.
Bullying comes in many forms, ranging from name calling, teasing, and hurtful rumors to physical attacks and cyberbullying, which involves using the Internet, social networks, texting, and cell phones to harass and intimidate others. Most studies report between 25 and 40 percent of young people experience bullying in school. A National Education Association report in 2011 said that nearly all students have had some exposure to bullying by the time they graduate high school. That report added that bullying can result in academic, social, emotional, physical, and mental health problems.