A note before you read: this post touches on past suicidal thoughts. If you are struggling, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The Life I Almost Never Knew

The invitation came in a text message.

I was 35 and living on my own for the first time in my life. I didn’t know how to do it, and I was struggling. So I did what I often did with my friend Robin. I vented. She listened, and thenShe invited me to church that Sunday. Her reason was three words long:

“We have Jesus.”

To understand why those words mattered, you’d need to know what I believed about myself long before that day.

I grew up believing my arrival had disrupted someone else’s plans. I learned early that approval had to be earned and perfection was expected. Quiet was safe, because quiet kept me off the radar and left fewer chances to get something wrong. And getting something wrong never felt like a simple mistake. It felt like proof that I was the mistake.

Those beliefs followed me into adulthood. I spent years trying to become someone other people could love, without ever knowing who I was. By the time Robin’s text arrived, I had spent more than two decades battling thoughts that the world would be better off without me.

I knew about Jesus the way a lot of people do. He had something to do with Christmas and Easter. I didn’t understand Scripture, and I had no idea what a relationship with God even meant.

But I knew Robin. I trusted her. And if Jesus was someone she thought I should meet, that was enough for me to take a chance.

So I went.

I couldn’t tell you what the sermon was about that Sunday. I don’t remember much of the day at all, except that I got to sit beside my friend and it was a good afternoon. It felt like a small, ordinary yes.

Six days later, my world fell apart.

What happened that night, and what happened when I walked back into church the next morning, is the story I’m telling on this week’s episode of Her Becoming. Robin gave me three words. A week later, I wrote five of my own on a piece of paper, and they changed the direction of my life.

I’ve shared this story in pieces before. Never quite like this.

I’ve thought about Robin’s text many times over the years. She didn’t send a sermon or an argument. She didn’t wait for the perfect words, or for my life to look ready. She simply offered what she had and trusted it to be enough.

I wonder how many of us are holding an invitation like that. Maybe someone in your life is quietly struggling, someone who doesn’t know Him yet but knows you. Your words don’t have to be eloquent. Robin’s fit in a single text message.

And maybe you’re the one reading this from your own version of 35, tired and unable to picture a future that looks any different from your past. If that’s you, I hope you’ll listen this week. Your story may not look like mine. (Truthfully, I really hope it doesn’t.) But I can tell you what happened when I said yes to a simple invitation.

I didn’t know this Jesus she wanted me to meet. But I knew her.

Sometimes that’s where it begins.

I Give You My Life | Her Becoming, Episode 11

From the prayer chair in my home, I share the beliefs that shaped my childhood, the night I almost didn’t make it to Sunday, the note I wrote during the offering, and why I believe the church’s work doesn’t end with the invitation.

Listen to or watch Episode 11: I Give You My Life

For a deeper exploration of what Scripture says about our identity, you can also read It Is Either True or It Is Not.