After I got out of the Army, I didn't seem to fit in anywhere. My old friends seemed to be the same, but I wasn't. The Army had changed my life a lot. The main thing that kept me going in the Army was knowing that one day I would be home, surrounded by people that loved me.

It wasn't like that when I got home. My mom couldn't pick me up at the airport. She was too busy. I took a cab to my parents' house. I found an empty house with no one to greet me at all. I started walking to my mother-in-law's house. Thank God a guy picked me up and gave me a ride to her house.

Everyone there was still grieving over my wife's death. She had died in a car wreck with her boyfriend. My mother-in-law was upset with me because I had stopped writing her and calling her when I was in stationed in Germany. My son didn't even know who I was because he had not seen me in two years. And he was young when I left. I had just gotten over my wife leaving me and now I had to deal with her death. This was just too much for me to handle.

There was nothing but misery and pain everywhere I looked. I did manage to find some of my old friends. I thought that was good. One day I was riding around and I saw one of my old friends walking down the railroad tracks. I decided to pick him up. We rode around for a while and decided to go to a park to get stoned. After we had been there a little while a cop pulled in behind us. He questioned us, and checked us out. It turned out my friend had been breaking into houses. The cop searched the car and found my bag of marijuana. We were both arrested. My new life away from the army had gotten off to a really bad start.

One of my old friends had been living with me, but things didn't work out and he moved out. I spent a lot of time alone after that and before I realized what was going on, I had completely withdrawn from people all together. The only people I talked to were the people I had to talk to at work because my job required it. I ended up getting really depressed.

After a few months of severe depression, I reached the point where I couldn't take it anymore. All of the misery and pain had to stop. I decided the only way out was to kill myself, so I planned my suicide. I was going to lock myself in my trailer and shove a butcher knife into my neck. Eventually I would either bleed to death or die of shock.

Music had always been a big part of my life and Black Sabbath had always been my favorite group. They had a song on one of their albums that said God was the only way to love. Really, the worst part of my depression was the fact that nobody loved me. I decided to try religion. I didn't really want to go to a church, so I ended up talking to my mother-in-law about religion and she gave me a Good News Bible. It turned out to be a really good bible for me to read because it was written in today's modern English and it was a lot easier to understand.

 I started reading the bible every night after I got home from work. As far as I could tell it was a waste of time because nothing changed in my life at all. I was still overwhelmed by my depression.

All of the pain and overwhelming sadness that was dominating my life was still there. One day, when I was driving home from work, I decided that today was a good day to die. When I got home, I went into my trailer, locked the door, got my butcher knife out, and I sat down on the couch and started to slowly push the knife into my neck. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by joy and immense happiness that I have never experienced before in my life. It was great.  It didn't take me long to figure out what happened. God saved me physically and spiritually. I desperately needed some happiness and joy, and God gave me more happiness and joy than I really knew what to do with. I was saved that day, at that moment in my life. I found out something everybody really needs to know. That is that God's power is real and active in peoples' lives. It isn't just something that we do on Sunday. God's power is amazing. His ability to save is real. His power to change lives is awesome. I don't care what people think about religion, the church or Christianity. If you doubt God's presence and power, you are lying to yourself. He is more real than anything you can see and touch. By your faith you can be saved. His power is found in His word - the Bible. Read it and believe it.