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Today’s guest is Steve. And Steve and I met when he and Beth moved to Tasmania and started attending our church. And I’ve already chatted with Beth and I think she’s episode 56 of this podcast.

But now I get to talk to Steve as well, because they’re brilliant people.

So they moved to Tassie for a while. And Steve and I worked at the same university, which was pretty cool. And then they had to move away, which was incredibly uncool. And they’ve done quite a bit of moving, which I’d like to talk to Steve about. Steve and Beth have three beautiful daughters. And, um, and yes, it’s funny ’cause Steve and I both worked as academics for a while and now Beth and I do very similar jobs. So I sort of I’ve swapped.

So, yeah, it’s been good to keep in touch. And I’m really excited to talk to Steve today. So welcome, Steve.

Thank you, Ruth. Yeah, I had never appreciated the irony of being colleague with you at uni and now you’re effectively a colleague of my wife.

I know it’s funny isn’t it.

That’s actually very good. Yeah.

Okay. So we’ll start where we always start which is by asking how did you become a Christian?

Well the first thing to say is that my parents were not people of faith in the same way that I would describe someone of faith. They had a nominal background.

They didn’t resent the church or reject it, or anything and sent me to Sunday school and things like that. They were they never had any attendance of their own. So I came very much to my own decision about Jesus, and moderately late in life, like when I was 17 or 18 years old. So, what I guess my point there is that that it wasn’t something that was influenced by my parents.

And therefore, I think there’s a real power in that because my testimony isn’t just one of childhood inheritance, but it’s one where I believe I encountered the living God myself and can say, look, He is real.

How it actually happened was a long journey, even as when I was sent to Sunday school, you know, my parents sent both me and my sister as a young kid. I lapped it up. I liked Sunday school. I enjoyed the stories. I appreciated the people who were teaching me. I kind of grew up believing something of the Bible.

Then I got to high school and struggled a little bit at high school in terms of making friends, in terms of settling in. And I was kind of looking for something. We lived in a rural village in north west England. You had to make your own entertainment. We were surrounded by farmland and there wasn’t a great deal to do. So was either TV or outdoors or hanging around on street corners. And lots of people made all those choices. Fortunately, I really appreciate the outdoors and I got in. So I first tried scouts. Cubs and scouts.

And then I fell into a group in the village, which was the Boys Brigade, which is in the UK, is a is a faith based organisation. It’s a bit like scouts, it actually pre-dates scout. Scouts was actually inspired by Boys Brigade, but it’s much more explicit in its Christian teaching content. So although you did all the activities camping. I learned so much through them. I did chess, judo, table tennis, hiking, outdoor, sort of multi-endurance competitions, yearly camps. It was great fun. But they also because we had a leader who was a genuine man of faith, every Sunday, you’d attend church and you’d be dressed in a uniform and you’d have a little parade and you’d be part of it. You’d be expected to take that seriously. And there was a kind of like a youth church where we all got together and had our own little teaching, which was really formative.

And then I got sick and I got sick because although I was involved in all this Christian stuff, I didn’t really understand it. And some of my other friendships or. Well, they weren’t it wasn’t even a friendship. It was because I was lonely. I got involved with a kid who was probably one of the few other kids who who seemed a bit of an outsider at school. And I went to his to the countryside one weekend with him and his stepfather. And it was in this beautiful remote valley and turned out this kid took occultic practices very seriously. So he was. He believed he was a wizard. He was very much into the occult and. And we kind of played around that.

But then at the end of the weekend, he got a little bit more seriously serious. And there was a kind of ceremony thing. And he said to me very explicitly, ‘you know, what I’m doing here, Steven, is nothing of the church has any part of it. In fact, this is in complete opposition to the church’, which is very perceptive.

He was only 14 or 15 years old, and he already knew that what he was doing that he was the enemy. That he considered Christianity an enemy. He considered everything that of Christ to be in opposition to him. And the day that happened, something died within me. I actually physically felt something die within me. And I was so terrified.

And in the months after that, I developed OCD. What does that stand for again?

Obsessive compulsive disorder.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, the hand-washing and the …

Well, that’s only one version.

Yeah.

I definitely had not hand-washing, but I definitely got obsessed with germs and I was always having to sort of rub my hands down if I touched someone or something. I just felt like really uncomfortable. But then it developed from there and it became much more terrifying.

In the sense that I felt that I had committed the sin that can never be forgiven. Or maybe I was even something darker. I obsessed over being the Antichrist. I could not stop chanting, so I would pray, pray, pray. But it was basically the same crazy words all the time. Clearly, my family saw this. You couldn’t hide it. I was struggling to hide it at school. My mum was very, very worried. And she got me to a psychologist. And in fact, part of the healing process was to withdraw from Sunday services and Christian content, Boys Brigade, because actually it just made me worse, so I would it would just became a trigger. Yeah. And so the guy who led the Boys Brigade was a very wise man. And he he understood that and he actually had a chat with my mother and he spoke, you know, he said ‘Steven, you really need to step away and come back when you’re feeling better.’.

So that was going on in my life, it was pretty serious and it was connected to depression and loneliness. What was happening around me was the man who led Boys Brigade had a son called Alister and his son was a few years older than me. And he was one of those guys that everyone looked up to. And he also professed to what appeared to be very serious faith at Boys Brigade. Turned out it was a he was charlatane he was lying or pretending or not really living, living his words. We didn’t know that. Anyway, he actually finished high school and went to university. And the very first few months of uni involved a trip to Holland. And he was on this aeroplane flying to Holland as part of his course.

And all his classmates were just like him, and they were actually just there for the party. The drink, the drugs, the women. And he realised on that flight over. That either he would have to abandon any pretence of Christian faith or take it seriously. And thank God he got off the aeroplane, left the course immediately and joined, went to Bible school. Took three months out.

Wow.

Basically, you know, there and then on the aeroplane, he he committed to Christ. And then he went and and took time to learn what that really meant. And he came back the weekend that I had my first Sunday back feeling a little bit better, but I wasn’t better. I was still ill. I just felt I could cope and I wanted to go.

And he came back that weekend and he took the Boys Brigade Sunday service thing and basically just gave his testimony. And at the end of it, I decided I did not know if Jesus was real or not.

I had no way of proving to myself that this thing called Christianity had any substance to it. But I could see the change in Alister’s life. I heard his words and on the balance of everything that I’d seen and heard over the years, I walked home and said, you know, Lord, I do not know if you’re real, but I’m going to decide to commit to you today anyway and we’ll see what happens. And the day the moment I did that my obsessive compulsive disorder left me. And I’ve never suffered since.

That’s amazing. That’s fantastic.

It was quite an experience. I didn’t have a, there wasn’t like a lightning bolt or anything. I just never suffered from it again. And it was a bit like I think I had a sort of vision thing. I don’t quite know how this fits in, but I remember feeling like I was in a very dark tunnel and there was just no way out.

It was just blackness all around. And I was terrified, like I didn’t know what was in the dark with you, didn’t know if there was a train, that was gonna come. And then I suddenly came to the realisation in the tunnel, in this vision, that it wasn’t a tunnel at all. I had just I just perceived it all wrong in the first place. And in fact, it was just mist and it began to lift and the sunlight came through.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a nice explanation.

Yeah. But of course, salvation isn’t a moment. I mean that was a moment, but it was a that was a big moment on on a journey that been taking place since Sunday school as a kid. And it was just one step on the way to continuing to work things out. So university was very formative, so exciting to go to uni and meet other young people who were exhilarated to believe in Christ. And I was part of the Christian Union, and that was a huge time for me. And I also joined an organisation called WYSOCS (West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies) who were very concerned about loving God with your mind and thinking Christianity and demonstrating that there are people of faith throughout academia in all the highest pursuits, from politics to history, arts, physics, maths, you name it, and that you can live your faith out in all those disciplines. So those things were very important to me as well.

Yeah. I have a question for me from something you said way back, which is you talked about, you know, it being important to you that this wasn’t just the faith of your parents that you took on board and that this was a decision that was obviously made for yourself. How are you helping your daughters to make that same decision for themselves? Because obviously, you and Beth are very vibrant in your faith are there things that you’re doing to help them sort of decide for themselves?

I know they’re young.

That’s a good question, because Zola is still quite young.

But both Anna and Lily have had moments where they explicitly said, ah, I think I’m going to believe. And we prayed about it. And we didn’t force that on them, we didn’t even tell them that you have to make a prayer like that they came to that naturally.

But yet so they’ve both sort of made a genuine commitment themselves internally. And Zola has just internalised the faith of the whole family. So she’s yet to come to the point where she would say something as explicit as that.

Having said that, you know, they did that very young and there have been periods, even at the ages of 8 and 11, where they’ve really questioned, how do I know this is real?

And so as parents, you would just continue to allow them to question and ask whatever they want and let them come to their own decisions, but also share our experience.

I also should clear something up. For a long time, you know, I came across Christians particularly at university who had had really remarkable conversions, and there is something that’s, you know, really exhilarating and special about someone coming to faith late in life and often in miraculous ways, you know? But I’ve come to understand the last few years and I make sure I want to make sure that I don’t give anyone the wrong impression from what I said earlier. I’ve come to understand in the last few years that there is something that’s really precious about having a faith from early childhood, from your first memories. And I think in the church we have a tendency to to favour the other. To the extent that many, many people feel they’re somehow second class Christians, having never had that miracle moment. But, you know, one of the great Christians of the church, the early fathers church fathers, was Timothy. And he grew up from an early age, knowing the scriptures and being taught in his faith to the extent where Paul realised here was a special young man. And he was going to mentor him directly. And I think in some ways, it’s even more impressive to be able to come to have faith and keep faith from an early childhood point.

Yeah, I mean, that’s my experience. You know, being brought up in a Christian, in a very strong Christian family. And I can pinpoint times in my life where I’ve had to say, look, am I in or am I out? But I know that I had to I still had to make decisions. But the inheritance that I have from parents and grandparents who are really strong Christians is just incredible. And I’m so blessed by it. It really does mean something special to me to have that inheritance as well, that heritage.

Anyway, enough about me. Why did you move to Australia?

That was easy. I did my PhD at Leeds University in the Earth Sciences I was a geologist and at the end of the PhD Beth and I were already married and an opportunity came up to apply for a postdoc with someone whose work I had been reading as part of my own science research and who I really admired his research. Never met him, didn’t know what he was like, said to Beth. Ah, there’s this job opportunity in Australia it’s only two years.

You know, it’s good CV practise. I’ll apply for a job and then we can decide. So I applied and fair enough. I got it. And then we had to decide and I was super excited. Part of me had always, you know, outdoors, travelled around the world and doing science like geology. You’re never really gonna be a home boy. And Australia was something beautiful and exotic and a country I’d always wanted to see. And so, yes, all those things came into it. Not necessarily in a way that was very clearly communicated to my wife.

And 20 years later, we’re still here.

Yeah, well, I’m happy about that.

And you’ve seen a lot of Australia because you’ve been moved from pillar to post, and that’s part of the academic life really isn’t it? The short term contracts.

Yes, and not a good part of it. It’s a very unhealthy part of academic life. So for anyone who’s listening. Yeah, we have served at the Australian National University University of Tasmania, University of Western Australia, and at Monash University. And we also had a short stint living in Sydney in between the last two. And I rose to the rank of associate professor but never had a permanent contract.

I came to Australia full of ideals and dreams that somehow I would be representing Christ in what is a very dark environment. Well, it’s not. It is a dark environment. You could argue all of society is evil. But there’s probably something specifically dark in academia because it’s an environment where secularism has such a large hold that it deliberately sets itself against … there are people who work, who think, who talk explicitly against the Christian faith, against Christ. And in that sense, and deny that that Jesus exists, denied he could be the son of God. So if you’re gonna go by the definition that’s written in James, then academia has within it in its present guise the spirits of the Antichrist. That’s not to say that there aren’t incredible people of faith in many disciplines around the world. They were always an inspiration to me.

How did you show your faith in that place?

Well, in several universities, I got other Christians together and we had weekly prayer groups and really tried to encourage each other and pray for one other. Then it was a matter of taking opportunities as they arose and not being afraid to make people know that I was a Christian and allow conversations to come up naturally. But it wasn’t, I don’t think there’s any way you can you can force it. And in fact, forcing it is, you know, we need to earn the right for people to listen.

When I was at ANU we did something. I was involved with another sort of World View organisation. And we ran a conference there, which was quite fun.

But yeah, it was kind of piecemeal. You know, my time in Canberra was probably the most focused. We’re part of a church that was very focused on living faith out in the workplace. We did that conference, I ran the group. But nothing really blossomed. And that sense of going from uni to uni and trying to do things with intent, but finding nothing really took off or blossomed. Funnily enough, I found that an experience that was repeated.

Yeah, that’s interesting because when I worked at the uni, I tried as well to get a prayer group off the ground and I think I tried for three years and. Yeah.

Hard going, yeah.

Very often it was just me which you know, if that’s what God want me to do, then I was doing it. But yeah, it was hard. It was tough. So yeah, I’ve had the same experience.

I’ve come to understand that subsequently, in a slightly different way. In that when we moved when we left Tasmania, and left you guys and we went to Perth, again that was a forced move. It was a very difficult thing. We didn’t want to leave Tassie. It resulted in severe financial stress for us related to houses. Shortly after moving, Beth’s father died. We had an extremely difficult pregnancy, second pregnancy. And Beth struggled with post-natal depression for a while. And we had a very hard time. And that continued professionally as well in UWA. And then from there, something special happened. God blessed us with a third child. Unexpectedly. And God blessed me with a new job in Monash, in Melbourne unexpectedly, which was sort of like a dream role. But again, still temporary. And we had a little time, too, and we and we found a wonderful church back in Melbourne as well. A bit like the wonderful church in Tassie that you and I were part of. And in fact, the one in Melbourne is connected to the one in Tassie. That’s how we got settled there.

Anyway so we  had a lot of time to reflect on the kind of valley of the shadow of darkness that we were had been walking through. And I realised that despite me believing and talking a lot about representing, wanting to pursue academic positions and roles and work because I wanted to represent Christ faithfully there, I realised that there were deep parts of me where there was a real idolatry. Because I think because I struggled at school and then I’d blossomed at uni, there was something deep inside me that saw that, you know, the ultimate proof of yourself was being able to make it as a professor.

So there was an idolatry there. I actually was valuing the esteem and the prestige that I saw attached to being in that environment. And one of the things had been frustration to me was I felt like I was doing lots of good research, but I never got awards and galas and recognition for it. And slowly I came to realise that I think God was putting his finger on things that I was treasuring that should not be treasured: esteem from human beings, prestige. That I thought, you know, that deep down was basically me stroking an intellectual ego. Making myself feel good about it. And as we came to realise that, you know, I I let go of it as I recognised that God has made me a geologist, but he hasn’t necessarily made me an academic. He did make me an academic. But it didn’t necessary. It wasn’t necessary for me to remain in that world.

That there might be lots of paths to take. And what was most important was those things deep inside me that were actually false. And idolatries and treasures that where I was drawing value from in terms of my identity. That weren’t of Christ. They were really exposed and they needed to die. There were other ones around, you know, contentment. We struggled financially. And part of me realised that when I first went into academia, I had this crazy, mistaken impression because I’d seen all these wealthy professors at university that somehow that would happen to me as well. And so actually, that was although money had never been a real driver for me, I recognise that actually deep down it was. There was a part of me that was expecting financial security and contentment from that.

And so that it sort of leads nicely into the fact that you are no longer an academic.

Yeah. Yeah. Well that was a that’s a yes. That’s an interesting story.

So, you know, we we had these I had these idols and treasures exposed and I really came to peace with that. And at Monash University, I started a whole area of research related to drones. And I really, Monash is just the most wonderful. Of all my academic experiences in universities, being at Monash was by far the best. Incredibly supportive internally. I had a leadership above me in the Vice Provost and Dean and and Head of School and, um, provosts at the time who were willing to listen to young academics, sure I was an associate professor, but I wasn’t at the professor level. They were willing to take ideas and they were willing to support them financially.

Amazing.

And so I put together a business plan over those three years and founded a whole institute around drones. And I worked towards being nominated as director for that. And we won a big grant to get equipment for it from the ARC, which is the big government organisation that funds research. And my research impacts went through the roof in parallel with this. So my papers were doing really well. I ended up supervising 23 students. I began to do research all over the world and some of the best exotic places New Zealand, the Canary Islands, the Sierra Nevadas in the US.

I had a ball. But at same time, I recognise now where my false treasures and idols had been placed and I kind of thought that the God was now blessing things and opening them up and. And ultimately, I was I’d got this insitute off the ground and I was made director, but it was with a three year contract still. And the leadership at uni changed.

I was, because of everything that happened to my, you know, it was beyond my wildest dreams where I was at now compared to my work where I had been four, five years ago. I thought, okay, well, even though the leadership’s changing things will, that’s kind of worrying for me in my family, but things will work out.

Yeah, I’ve made it to this level now, so it’s all gonna come to flower.

Yeah, God had always been faithful.

And I think actually this you know, there was definitely a there’s a real truth in that if you believe that …

If you’re abiding in God, abiding Christ and you believe you are where he is put you, you’re there at that time for his purposes. You know, if you’re faithfully seeking him and laying all your decisions before him and remaining is is a perfectly feasible option, then then you take that on trust and remain.

We could easily have made that decision. But what happened was I got everything I wanted and then out of the blue a mining company headhunted me, which is Anglo American. And I recognise that being at the age of forty five, that this was a crossroads that I couldn’t, if I said no to them, and I had turned down many mining companies in the past, if I said no to them now, I would be locking myself into academia because I would never have an opportunity in industry again. And I was willing to do that because I, because everything I’d ever wanted had just become realised, apart from the permanency.

But we prayed about it. And then two people quite independently whom I respected within the church challenged me on that decision. And one of them phoned me up and he never phones. He never voluntarily phones me. And he said, you know, Steven, you have daughters. And in three years time, if things don’t work out, they’ll be at high school. And one of them, you know, will be going through puberty, very hard time for her, uprooting instability in this period of life is going to be really tough. Are you sure you’re making the right decision?

So at that point, I actually thought that God was challenging me on the decision himself.

I felt that he was saying, you know, consider this very carefully, and actually making me, wanting me to, to not necessarily commit to academia.

So we prayed about it. We went to church laid it before the leaders. Had lots of people praying for us. And we were praying about it a lot, our little house group was praying about it a lot. And we just basically asked one thing, that if we’re to stay, then may the university change the offer. So I’ve been given this directorship. I’ve got a huge responsibility now, but a lot of risk. And I needed the uni to recognise that as a family, we required a longer term contract or permanency. But, you know, it just wasn’t going to them saying, hey, change your minds. I went to them very honestly. I said, look, there’s an international mining company who headhunted me. We’ve put all this work into this new institute. I will stay. I don’t want a promotion. I don’t want more money but I’m giving you the opportunity before the company offer me their job. Give me the opportunity to consider whether you can make me permanent and that this was without even knowing whether Anglo American would offer me the job. I hadn’t been through all the interviews yet. And at the end of all that, the uni basically didn’t increase the offer even a little bit. You know, they didn’t even offer to extend the three years to five years. But Anglo-American did offer me the role. And so with some sadness of heart, but truly believing this is one of those points in life where it actually matters what decision you make. That God really was leading us into a new chapter. Then we made the decision to move to Brisbane and me take up my role with Anglo American.

Wow.

So there was a a dying to those research dreams, but a trusting God that he has a new purpose and new plans in store. And also it was also providing for us in a special way at a time we needed it.

Yeah. Absolutely. So at this point, you know, you’d really like to say, and they all lived happily ever after.

Thus far-ish. Yeah.

That’s good to hear.

We’ve only been here six months. So.

Yeah. Are you finding it easier to live your faith in in the new situation or is it too early to tell?

Well, funnily enough. My academic job, as you know, Ruth, incredibly hard work. You never really switch off and you see people work themselves to the bone for not badly paid jobs, but not great paid jobs. And but having moved here. The quality of life is so much better. So I’m able to switch off a little bit, even though I’ve got very high profile role.

And, you know, we just have more time for things. So I guess what I’m trying to say about all of that is there’s been a little bit of a of a reboot. And in terms of living my faith is probably I haven’t, I’m not doing anything new or different. I’m still acting and thinking and responding in the same way I was before. But I have had several opportunities to openly discuss my faith or the fact I’m a Christian and go to church, with colleagues and then, funnily enough, with with academics.

So, it’s funny how things come around, but there’s two separate couples who I’ve had contact with, sowed seeds with, throughout the last 20 years in the research world who I’m now in touch with as a professional scientist in industry. And they’ve entered a new stage of openness. And so it’s been really special this last six months.

It’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a that’s a reward in itself, isn’t it?

Yeah.

When do you feel close to God?

Every morning. I am such a broken, corrupt human being that unless I had practiced the habit. Or embraced the habit that I built up over the last few years of praying and just listening to a little podcast or praying or just spending, having the first few thoughts of the day with God and with Christ and meditating on his word or whatever.

Unless I do that, by the end of the day, I’m so far off the rails. You know what’s inside my heart and inside my mind is is horrific. So, yeah, I’d say.

I’m not talking about, I can’t point to mountaintop experiences, I’m talking about on a daily basis I’m most close to God when I deliberately take that time. And I guess one of the things I’ve learned the last five to 10 years is that a very important passage has come back to me and has meant a lot more to me in a fresh way. It’s actually the passage which Alister spoke on all those years ago, when I became a Christian, which is John 15, you know, I am the vine, you are the branches.

And Christ talks a lot in that chapter about abiding in me. Remaining in me. And in fact, that theme of abiding in God I’ve come to understand is throughout the Bible, but maybe in language that we don’t recognise yet. David speaks a lot about the best place he ever could live would be in the temple. And what he’s talking about there is actually because he understood the temple was the place where God’s presence was. He’s talking about drawing, coming into the presence of God and dwelling in God’s house. And so I think, yeah, Jesus is sort of picking up that theme again in John and and encouraging his disciples and by proxy this is how our lives should be lived. Everything we do should be in some mystical and wonderful way at rest in him.

And I struggle to do that. I struggle with that practice of remaining in God throughout the day. But I guess, you know, those days those few days when you get it right, you find your work is that much more of a joy. The way you’re interacting with your wife and your children, is that much more meaningful. Because everything is under, in some way, his sovereign lordship and he is present there with you and you are trying to say things and do things and work in a way that is honouring him, you know, prayerfully.

Yeah. Which podcast do you listen to? Is it the daily audio bible or do you have another one that you listen to?

There’s a Catholic one Pray as You Go. Which I really love. It’s often meditative. And then for the most breathtaking and stimulating kind of opening up the scriptures, rather than a meditative thing, I listen to the Bible Project. Now the Bible Project has YouTube videos, but they also have a whole series of podcasts where Tim and John just chat like mates over a particular theme or a particular passage and really explore it. And then they open it up and they often go all the way from the beginning through all the the Old Testament, the exodus, the exile. And then bring it back, have it all pointing to Christ. And you know, it’s.

It’s mind-blowing isn’t it?

It’s a really wonderful resource. It’s sort of democratizing orthodox deep theology for everyday people. To the extent that yeah. I get a lot out of what they are doing.

Awesome. I will put links to those in the show notes.

Last question, which is the big one. What’s one thing about God or Christianity you wish everybody knew?

Can I break it down?

Yes. Attack it how you will.

So to those people listening who already have faith, I guess I would like us to recognise that salvation is to be worked out throughout all your life. It’s not a moment. It’s not a switch. It’s an ongoing thing. I firmly believe you can lose your faith and actually lose your position in the kingdom. That’s a theological debate for another day.

But going back to something you and I have talked about previously, I think one of my sadnesses was seeing a lot of young people at university fired up for Christ, seeing overseas missions work as the ultimate ideal. And I really believe if Australia is to be transformed, if the West is to have any kind of faith when Christ returns, then we need to take seriously the mission field that’s in our daily lives and on the doorstep here.

And see that as as precious and as important as going overseas. And I don’t want to detract from from those who are called overseas. But I think sometimes some people maybe value that as the the most glorious thing a Christian can do. And the ideal.

And maybe even easier than just working out your faith where you are. Sharing your faith, where you are. Reaching the people, where you are. It feels easier to go to some strange, exotic place. And, you know, you feel like that will be easier to do. But but actually, you know, God may be calling you to do it here and now.

Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s true. Yeah. And it’s hard here and now.

What else? So for those who aren’t of faith. Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty obvious. I just guess I hope everyone. Has the opportunity to take seriously whether the claims of Jesus, are real or not, and not just dismiss them.

And what I’ve talked about, my example of how I came to faith it is a very important piece of evidence because the evidence of testimony is is the same evidence that’s held up in court and convicts people. And judges make rulings as to what is true or false on a case based on witness. So you can dismiss my story as fantasy. But in doing that just be cognizant you’re dismissing something that’s considered by the highest law of the land as serious evidence. Yeah, but I guess I’d also say that God’s grace is mind blowing and people can be people of faith in all sorts of colours and ways and shapes. Yes. So it’s not like we want to make you into a particular type of human being with particular sort of understanding the world.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s an important thing for people of faith to realise as well. You’re as unique as God created you, completely unique and he’s got a unique plan for your life. So, yeah, take it. Run with it. That’s something I feel very strongly about.

Cool.

Thanks so much for sharing with us tonight.

Thanks, Ruth. It’s been a pleasure.

Today’s guest is Suraj, and I met Suraj at the Bishop’s training event, which you have heard about before, because I meet really great people at the Bishop’s training event. So this is the 2019 one. And Suraj got up on stage and talked about his ministry at the university and I was really impressed. And so I chased around afterwards and found him at his stall and said, Can you come on my podcast? And he said, Yes. So you’re very welcome, Suraj.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Excellent. Firstly, where do you come from? Because your accent is not Caucasian-Australian like mine.

Yeah. I’m originally from Nepal. So it’s been four years. Nearly four years since I came to Australia.

Wow, your English is impeccable.

Thank you.

Okay. So we usually start by asking how you became a Christian.

Yeah. I became a Christian and the age of 10. I was born into a Hindu family, my dad, my brother and my mom, they were not Christian. They were Hindus. There used to be a church next door in my in my hometown in Nepal. So every Saturday, I used to see little children go to church have fun, dance, play games, do activities and craft, stuff like that. And I wanted to go and see and be a part of that little group. And Saturdays are our public holiday in Nepal not Sunday. So every Saturday morning I used to see these children having fun. And I went to the church and the pastor of the church or the leader of the church was quite reluctant to invite me to the church because he was intimidated by my dad. Because my dad is a really loud Hindu extremist. He can be quite antagonistic towards Christians. But yeah, he wasn’t super interested. He just said if you come to church, your dad will come and he will mess up. So.

I mean that is a risk, isn’t it?

Yeah, that was a risk. And I was just 10 years old. Yeah. And anyway, I went behind the church to see through the window. And what’s going on inside the church. Yeah. And every Saturday morning I had to go behind the church and see through that. But yeah. In Nepal church was like a little shed. Yeah. A couple of windows. Yeah. And then after I did that for a couple of months and seeing my you know, having seen my passion to know about from the Bible or about the community or Christian community, the pastor said to me yeah, yeah. You can come to church, I’ll let you in and I’ll talk to you dad and let’s see what happens. So yeah, after that I went to the church and every time I went to church my dad would chuck my, you know, meal or lunch in the bin every time I went to church and that was like punishment.

But that didn’t stop me from going to church. Yeah, that’s how I became a Christian and it was going well. And when I was 17 years old and my dad said to me, hey, Suraj I have noticed, you have been, you know, going to church for a long time. Today you have to make a decision. Either stay home. If you wanna stay home in my home, you’ll have to stop going to church. Or if you keep going to church, then I’ll kick you out of my house. So it was a big decision for me to make, you know, and I come from a collectivistic culture where family’s very important and you don’t make decisions by yourself. And, you know, in my culture leaving the house at the age of 17 is very abnormal. It’s never heard of. So and I, left home and I started living with my sister and her husband because my sister was married then to a pastor and she had a little boy and I lived with her family.

So she she was obviously older than you and she was a Christian.

My eldest sister and ever since I moved away from my house and then she’s my spiritual mentor. You know, she taught me, mentored me to help me grow in Christian faith.

So I feel a bit sorry for your father.

But he’s relenting now. He’s softening. So this is a really good.

So we’ll keep praying for him. If you have time in your prayers, pray for Suraj’s family.

Thank you so much.

I mean, that’s a really huge decision to make at such a young age. It’s amazing.

So what brought you to Tasmania?

Yeah, I came to Tasmania to marry my wife. Her name is Jemima and she’s from Tasmania. Well, she was born in Western Australia, but she moved down to Tassie.

To a better place. Where did you meet her?

In Nepal in 2013. We met in Nepal. And we liked each other. We decided to get engaged and we got engaged in Nepal. And I wanted to come first and see the culture, the Western culture and before, you know, before our wedding. But anyway, I was going to marry her anyway. But I just wanted to come and see the culture here. Yeah. In 2016, I came to Tasmania.

Fantastic. What was Jemima doing in Nepal?

It’s a long story. She went to Nepal to help the little children there. We have orphans and orphanages and children’s homes. And they she she went to Nepal to help the children.

As a Christian outreach thing. Just a short-term thing?

Watch out people. Go on short term missions. Your life might change.

Actually, I’m so in favour of everyone going on short term missions in a in a sensible way. Yeah, well, you know, not I’m not into voluntourism at all, but but it’s so important for us Westerners to go out and see that the world is different to how it is here.

It opens your eyes actually. Yeah. It just, you get to see something different. Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing.

So the school that my husband teaches at often does short term missions to Fiji or Vanuatu, places like that. And we say to the kids, ‘your your holidays are going to be wrecked from here on in because you can’t just treat it like a hotel resort when you know what life is like behind the scenes’. I just think it’s very important. Big, big in favour of that. Okay. So you’re in Tasmania, what do you do as a job?

I’m a teaching assistant at Springfield Gardens Primary School in West Moonah and I mainly work with students whose language was English as a second language. It’s called EAL English as an additional language with those children. Yeah. I work there.

Oh, that’s fantastic. So you and you’d have some idea of where they’re coming from and how hard it is.

Yeah, most of them are a refugee or migrants and refugees. Yeah. And then the little children don’t have good English. So I help them in learning English.

Are any from Nepal?

They’re from, you know, some from Nepal or India and China, Korea and from the South African countries as well. Yeah, Ethiopia.

So it’s not like you know their first language at all, but you just helped them.

Yes. Yeah.

Oh, that’s fantastic. How does your faith show in that?

Yeah. So I’m really good with the little children. And I just tell them a story about Nepal and a little bit about Christian faith as well. And I’m not allowed to do that at school. You are not allowed to enforce a religious view. Yes. And so, yeah, I should be. I’m sensible towards that.

But you can tell them about your story.

Yeah.

Oh that’s fantastic. So you’re also working at the uni. With the Subbies?

Yeah, Subbies ministry.

Can you tell us a bit about that?

Subbies is an evangelistic ministry to reach out to the students from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from the subcontinent now with the gospel of Jesus. The good news of Jesus.

So what do you do?

We have food, fun, friends and faith and also festival. So we. Yeah. That’s our motto. To bring them in to Subbies and then our main vision is to make disciples of all nations.

And you talked at the Bishop’s training event about cultural differences and about people, that whole ‘white Jesus’ issue that we seem to have.

So we have students from the, mainly from the Hindu backgrounds and Muslim and Buddhist backgrounds, and so we have to be very sensitive when we share the gospel. When we approach with the gospel. So you are very sensitive and you don’t wanna be offensive towards their religious system. Yeah.

Was it you who was saying that that often people feel like if they if they become Christians, that they have to completely change their culture and become, you know, like white people?

In the subcontinent, Christianity is viewed or Christianity is considered as a Western religion. And Jesus is like English speaking white western God. That’s how they view Christianity and Jesus.

It’s not true, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.

It’s not true, but that’s how they view it.

And then if you ask them, do you want to become a Christian, they hear, do you want to become a Westerner? Or do you do you want to become a foreigner? That’s what they hear. And yeah. So that’s why at Subbies, the main thing we’re doing is providing them the Bibles in their own language. So that they get to hear about Jesus in their own language, in their heart language. And that dispels that myth, you know, that Jesus is merely a white English-speaking God.

Yeah. So you would you would say it’s absolutely vital to have the Bible in your own language?

Yeah. That makes a huge difference in their life as well.

And do you in the Subbies do you try and create a pocket of culture that’s similar to the home culture?

Yeah. That’s why we have festivals as well. We are we celebrate Nepali New Year or Tamil in New Year and Bangladeshi New Year, Sri Lankan New Year, or we try to celebrate Diwali, that sort of thing to to just attract them to Subbies. And they come and they get to meet the person of Jesus..

Has it been a success? I guess its success is like if one person came to the Lord. But you know, what sort of response have you had?

We started this ministry Subbies ministry in 2017 and throughout the year 2017 we were able to read the Bible with more than hundred non-Christian students and one person became a Christian. He accepted Jesus. That was in 2017. And in 2018 and 19 in two years, we were able to read the Bible around 300 non-Christian students. And a fifty of those students are attending local churches like not regularly, but on and off. But four of them are really, you know, genuinely and deeply they’re investigating Christianity or exploring Christian faith.

So that’s even though they have a they haven’t made a decision to follow Jesus yet, but actually that’s a that’s a fruit.

That’s so exciting. It really is. How many people are there in this Subbies ministry team?

We have a team of around twelve leaders and most of them except me, everyone who is there, everyone of them are volunteers. They help me with the ministry here.

And they’re all from the subcontinent as well?

Seven from Tasmania. And we also have student leaders as well.

Yeah, it’s fantastic. It’s so exciting to hear things like that going on, you know?

And most of the people don’t know about it. And it’s happening in our back yard.

It’s why I want to get the word out. People need to know about this.

So, yes, I think this interview won’t go out until the beginning of next year. We’re recording at the end of twenty nineteen but we won’t it won’t be on the list until beginning of 2020. But you’ll be just heading into another year.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Where do you get the Bibles from?

We order online from the, from those countries. Yeah. And we’ve got them here.

We have Bibles in eleven major subcontinental languages. Can I tell them now?

Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Kannada, Nepali, Urdu, Bengali and Sinhalese eleven major subcontinental languages. We have Bibles in those languages.

It’s fantastic. And when I went and looked at them at the Bishop’s training event, some of them read from left to right.

Yeah, that’s Urdu. Yeah, that’s. Yeah.

So some from right to left. So Urdu is the one that reads from right to left. Backwards. Not backwards. Right to left rather than left to right. It’s a good thing. Cool.

OK. So is there anything else you wanted to share about?

Yeah, at Subbies, we as I already mentioned that we celebrate festivals as well. And when we celebrated Diwali at Subbies. That was the largest group we ever had. Ever since we started Subbies, we had about 85 people come together. And the topic was Diwali or Festival of Lights. And our message was, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And that was that was a huge success. And, you know, out of 85, 75 people were non-Christians. They had most of them had never heard of Jesus before. That was really so, so good to see them, you know, hearing the gospel in their own language, in their heart language. Yeah, that’s absolutely amazing.

I guess it that’s the thing. It’s like. Yes, going overseas is a very good idea. But at the same time, God is bringing people who’ve never heard about Jesus to our backyard. We can reach out to them.

And also, you know, Subbies is one of the largest ministries in Australia that is reaching out to the subcontinental students. One of the largest, I should say. And then and that’s all because of God’s mercy, you know, God’s grace, we have been able to do this. And our vision is to make that make them disciples of all nations. And that’s how we can make disciples of Jesus. And there used to be a time people, missionaries from America or from the Western countries I know send to those countries like subcontinent. Or Asia. But now these great nations are coming to Tasmania and Australia. And I think we should be able we should be ready to share the gospel with them. And they and they are the best missionaries we can send because they know the language, they know the culture and they have passports and there is no visa problem when they apply. And just they’ll be a good fit there. And I know the main thing, they know the culture and language and. Yeah.

So they’re not going back saying, hey, you need to become Western and white Christian. They’re going back saying, Jesus is for all nations.

Yeah, absolutely. So subbies is not just UTAS here? Is it at several universities around the nation?

No, actually it is just here in Tasmania. Often Tasmania is overlooked. But actually, we have great ministry going on in Tasmania.

And last, last year or last semester, we had an AFES staff from from Victoria I think coming down to Tasmania to see our ministry before they started their ministry there. And that was a big blessing.

So can I put details about you in the show notes? If somebody wants to start a Subbies.

Yes absolutely. And I want to extend my network and with the, you know, people, individual or churches around Tasmania, all of Australia. So, yeah, you can. Thank you.

Fantastic. OK. So when do you feel close to God?

In the morning. Every morning, I pray. For about forty five minutes. Something like that. So that that time is so special for me. Just sometimes you don’t have prayer matters to pray for. There’s so many prayer matters, but. Just sitting there in his presence. And yeah, I feel so close to God at that time. And also when I read the Bible, sometimes there are verses in the Bible. You often read it, but you don’t feel close. But sometimes you’re like oh I had never thought about that before. That’s quite interesting.

Yeah, it’s like God speaking directly to you from what you read.

And what’s one thing about God or Christianity you wish everyone knew?

I was actually pondering on this question I think it depends on who you ask. If you ask anyone from the subcontinent, because there are so many gods in Hinduism and you know multi-million gods are there. And if you ask them, so they think, as I already mentioned, that they think Christianity is a Western religion. And I wish people from the subcontinent knew that Jesus is the only way. And but in the Australian context, I I wish people people knew that God never gives up on people. He loves them the way they are.

Yeah, that’s interesting. So in the first point there, one of the problems,I think with Hinduism and Christianity is that people just tend to add God or Jesus as one of  the many, many gods. How do you go about convincing people that he’s different to all of that huge display of gods?

It’s really tricky. You got to be very careful about, you know, mindful about what what do you say and how they’re receiving Jesus. So if you ask them, Jesus is God and Son of God? And they’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. I like Jesus. I like Jesus. But actually, when it comes to absolute truth, Jesus is the only way. And there they are like, hang on. I don’t quite agree with this because we have already multi-million gods. And why do I need Jesus? And so I think the Holy Spirit will give you the spirit of discernment to know where they are at in their faith. So they are happy to accept Jesus as one of the gods. But so we have to tell them. Actually no, Jesus is the only way. Yeah. So it’s yeah. It’s, it can be quite confronting for them.

Yeah. I mean even in terms of the different religions that you know that Hinduism and then Islam and then whatever is there’s so many different worldviews there that you’re dealing with just amongst the people of the subcontinent.

And yeah, it’s it’s not easy but God is there to help us.

And then I’m interested in your second point, because I think you’ve come over from Nepal. You’ve seen our culture. And this is what you feel like we’re missing.

Yeah. And because there are so many questions people have, you know, everywhere. But the most common question here is, you know, if God was there, then why is there suffering? That sort of question. And you get to get to see and get to hear and, yeah, actually, I don’t have the answer, but I think people, I wish people knew the power of God’s love. I know it sounds cliche when I say I wish people knew God’s love. But actually, I wish they actually knew, you know, the power of God’s love.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that Suraj.

That’s my pleasure. Yeah. Anything else you wanna know?

I can’t think of any more questions. You have any more that you wanted to share?

I’d like to share about the ministry centre. Is that okay?

Yes, please.

At Subbies, most of the sense we have from the Hindu background and we come from a collectivistic culture and so I have never seen at Subbies one student come to Subbies. They always bring their friends. That’s really interesting. And in bringing them to Subbies, we have we only do half of the work. We want to do 100 percent, but actually they bring their friends. And that’s really that shows that that shows that they know they have the ownership of Subbies. Then they feel Subbies belongs to them or that they belong to Subbies.

Yeah, that’s really great. I think we could learn a lot from collectivist culture.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s when one of the things and when you ask them, you know, if you ask them do you wanna become a Christian? The main thing is ‘I want to become a Christian. I like Jesus. But actually, what would my parents think about it if I you know, if they knew me going to church that, that’d be a big, big shame on the on the community. On the family.’ And they don’t want to make that decision. It’s very different actually. But here you when you are 18 you can do whatever you want. I mean I’m I’m 18, I’m old enough to make a decision for myself. But in Nepal or in the subcontinent …

You never.

Yeah, my family first. Or my society. My community first.

Yes. But over here we’re all incredibly lonely and isolated and, you know, dying alone because we don’t have that family and community that we need. So there are there are good things and bad things on both sides.

Yeah, yeah. And I like one of the good things. One of the things of individualistic culture. Actually, you make you get to make decisions for yourself and to follow Jesus. And that’s very personal. That’s the kind of relationship God wants from us, not about you know, forget about your mom and dad because I, I left home.

Yeah, so there is, yeah, that definitely has to happen.

And I also I also can encourage people those who want to. Those who are in the same situation I was in. If they if they want to follow Jesus, but they’re not quite sure how. I think I can, because I have got that experience. I can encourage them. And I had to go through the same situation. But you can see how God has helped me.

Yeah, absolutely. You’ve been put in exactly the right place.

Yeah. I think so, thank you.

Was Subbies your idea?

Dr Sam Gough and I, I don’t know if you know him.

Yeah, I do.

Sam wanted to start the Subbies ministry, but he wasn’t quite sure how. And he was collecting information from people and trying to catch up with people with ideas. And I got to know him and, yeah. And we prayed together. We shared our vision together and we started this.

The right person at the right time.

Thanks so much.

That’s alright, thank you so much for having me.

Today’s guest is Annette Young. Annette is the cousin of a good friend of mine, and she is also a writer, which is wonderful. She’s written 2 absolutely beautiful – now, I’ve put ‘historical fiction’. Is that how you advertise your gorgeous books?

Yes, I seem to fall into that category.

– which are called ‘A Distant Prospect’ and ‘By Violence Unavenged’, and I will put links to them in the show notes, obviously. They’re very good. Annette also home schools her 4 boys – I’ve got that right, haven’t I?

You have.

Yes. And we’ll have a chat about that as well. She lives on the mainland, and if you’re not a Tasmanian, that means the big island of Australia. And we met in person for the first time when she came down to launch ‘By Violence Unavenged’, and that was really good and we chatted for ages and ages, so I’m really excited to be able to introduce Annette to everybody who’s listening, and to be able to talk with her again! So you’re very welcome, Annette.

Thank you.

So, first question I always ask everybody is: how did you become a Christian?

Right. That is quite a long story. Well, one thing is I was brought up as a Christian, even if nominally sometimes. And I had experimented through school. There was always the sense that God wanted me for something. There’s always been that thing. Even though I’ve gone through my agnostic phases and atheistic phases, there’s been – contradictory to my sometimes atheism – that, no, there is a God, and I’m here for something. The first big – I went to some Billy Graham things when I was in my early teens at high school, and that was quite inspiring but not very long-lasting. The really big one was actually at Cradle Mountain, when I was 17. I did the big walk across Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. And it was being out in nature, without any of the trappings of city life, and seeing that sun come up and sun go down, beautiful mountain sunsets… it rained most of the time, and after that we went to Wineglass Bay where we were camping. And that is when I had my God moment, that God existed. I can remember walking across that beautiful bay and thinking ‘Yes. God exists.’ And I had the words from Corinthians come, ‘but if I have [not] love, I have nothing.’ And that was it. God existed, therefore I had to do something about it. And it was as clear as that. And from that moment on it was ‘Yes. I’ve got to find out more. I’ve got to do more. I’ve got to work this out.’

So that was – the 1 Corinthians 13 ‘If I do all this but don’t have love I am nothing.’

Yep, that’s it.

When you say you experimented in school, I thought that was an interesting term. What did you experiment with?

(laughs) I think I was just questioning lots of things. So I’d go off to my friends’ fellowships and stuff like that, I would ask lots of questions. I was the kid who’d sit at the back of the classroom, leaning back on the chair, listening to everything, not necessarily contributing but then asking the really sticky question. I’d dip into the Bible now and then. I’ve always been a big history buff, so history lessons were quite fascinating. And I can remember studying the Reformation and being horrified by Calvin and Zwingli for destroying all the things that I loved, which is art and music and dancing and that sort of thing. And then being really taken by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and this ‘do all things for the glory of God.’ So it’s been up and down, up and down. Going to Billy Graham things, various things that would happen at school… so it was that sort of quiet experimentation, and lots and lots and lots of questions, as one asks when one does experiments. One asks questions.

And then you get to that point, and you say ‘Right, line in the sand here,’ and that happened in our beautiful nature here in Tasmania, so that’s pretty cool!

Yes!

See, everybody, you need to come to Tasmania. It’s good for you. Actually I think that there really is something about nature being good for the soul, isn’t it? It just gets you back in touch with what’s really real.

Yes.

So when did you decide to start writing?

Um, that was very late. That was while I was doing – I was in my mid-thirties, and it was while I was doing my PhD, or beginning work on my PhD. And I was doing some work on Charlotte Bronte’s early manuscripts, things that she wrote when she was a kid. I had the opportunity to live another person’s life, another person’s imaginative world, in writing out and preparing these works for publication. And I realised that she and I did the same thing: we had imaginary friends, and we lived out their exploits. And I thought at that point ‘Well, if she can do it, so can I.’ And I’ve always had this way of processing much of my life experiences through my imagination, and so I thought ‘Right. I’m going to harness what I’m doing and write a book myself.’ And it happened to be that I was doing a PhD in literature, and there’s no better way of understanding how a novel works than to actually sit down and attempt one yourself.

Yeah, that’s true.

And that is what happened. I never thought I’d ever be a writer. That is one of the last things I ever expected myself to be. So I really did fall into it, and it was in doing it that I really discovered something I could do. I’ve been able to do many things, but that was something that really was mine. It was the thing that I was meant to do.

Yeah, I totally understand that. I feel very similarly about it. That you just get ‘Oh, this fills that hole inside that I didn’t even realise was there and it makes me very happy to do this.’

Yes, yes yes yes. And to be able to connect with others through it, that was the most shocking experience.

Shocking?

A shocking experience. Because you’ve had that imaginative world, it’s been your very private world, you’ve really lived most of the time with your own thoughts and never really shared those things with others to a deep degree, and then to write a book where it all comes out and to have people connect over that, yes, it was very confronting. It was shocking.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that.

I continue to be surprised at people’s eagerness to respond. (laughs)

Yeah, it’s amazing, isn’t it? I know that a lot of us are quite introverted, you spend a lot of time sitting by yourself at your desk doing your writing and talking to yourself, in a way, and then to have other people read it and then respond to you with ‘Oh… okay!’

‘Are you serious?’ (laughs)

So faith is very important to you and writing is very important to you – how do those two things intersect in your life?

Oh boy. Well, they intersect very much. Writing is very much a manifestation of faith. And also that struggle in relation to faith. There’s a lot of that in it. Oh, how do I explain this? Many times in my life I’ve often felt silenced, in not being able to speak out as I wished, not being able to say the things I’d like to say, and writing gives me that chance to have my voice, to be able to say what needs to be said. Sometimes people don’t want to hear what you have to say. Writing gave me that chance to say the things that I want to say that sometimes… you know when you’re talking to somebody and you think ‘I wish I’d said that,’ or they don’t want to hear it, but they’re prepared to hear it in their own private nest when they’re reading a book. There’s something about that very private fact of reading where certain things can be said that don’t even have a place sometimes in the most intimate conversations. It’s a real moment for the soul, many times. And then with writing, very much in some ways – although I don’t write autobiographically – there is a spiritual autobiography going on, and some of the struggles of characters are things that I myself have struggled with, and had to come to terms with, and thought through or not thought through. Some things there are still questions. But yes, writing is very – that intimate part. Sometimes one is writing one’s prayer life out.

Yeah, I love that. That’s gorgeous. So you are home schooling 4 boys – how on earth do you find time to write as well as home school?

(laughs) Everybody asks me that question. It’s a juggling act. A lot of the things you do help them to learn for themselves, and also home schooling is wonderful because of its flexibility, that you teach each child according to their needs. It takes a lot less time than normal school would. Everybody thinks I school for 6 hours a day and then I sit down and write. Well, I don’t, I school for about 2 hours a day, and then the afternoons are free for everybody. So the afternoons are my writing time. So I’ll get down and do something of an afternoon, usually between about 2 and 5. Though I’ve had a sabbatical this year, I haven’t written anything at all! And decided to get back into it this month. Quite frankly I can’t bear not writing anymore! (both laugh)

I totally understand that. But your books – do you start with doing a whole lot of research, or do you start with writing things out and then see what research needs to be done afterwards? How does that work?

It’s a mixture. Depends on the topic. Look, you know the funny trails you can go down, and you end up checking as a writer, and especially with historical fiction you go down some really bizarre little trails. I start off with a story in mind, and then the research is done to flesh out the story, definitely. One thing that’s been really hard, that’s actually stopped me from writing this second volume is that the research is incomplete. But then I reminded myself that the research was very much incomplete with ‘By Violence Unavenged’ when I began it too, and I simply had to start with the story and then work in the details as I found out the details themselves, so there’ll be a lot of reworking. One goes hand in hand with the other.

It’s the story that’s important, isn’t it? Everything has to support the story.

That’s right. You’ve got to tell the story, and then the details have to support the story. With writers of historical fiction, it’s very easy to get bogged down into the historical detail and the historical circumstances, and they can start drowning the story. And getting that balance between character and emotion, fiction and then the circumstances in which that takes place is a very tricky one to handle. Especially when you’ve got readers with various degrees of knowledge. You’ve got the trainspotters, you’ve got the professors, who love that you treat their pet period or any period with the respect it deserves, and then you’ve got the persons who are completely ignorant of any of it, and they’re dipping into your book and all of sudden there’s this train load of German history coming at you at full throttle! (laughs)
So, in many ways, you’ve just got to leave the reader to deal with what they can manage or not manage, and just hope for the best!

Absolutely. To say that the first book that I mentioned, ‘A Distant Prospect’, is set in Sydney, but ‘By Violence Unavenged’ is largely in Vienna, and around the time of the beginning of the Second World War, yes?

Yes, just before.

Just before. So there’s probably quite a few people who have that as their favourite period, I would have thought.

Oh, it’s a fascinating period, but nobody – especially in the English language – nobody’s really done Austria. And Austria is fascinating. And it really… look, it was writing ‘A Distant Prospect’ and having to consider World War 1 from the non-Anglo perspective that really got me very interested in European affairs between wars. And my whole idea of history just changed so much with looking at things from that other angle. So, away we went, with Austria. And I think it helps, because we can become so comfortable in our own viewpoint, especially because we won the war. We ‘won the war’ in inverted commas – nobody wins wars. But that notion of ‘Well, therefore because we won we must be right,’ when that is absolutely not necessarily the case. And considering things from these different angles makes for a very interesting engagement, which can be – I think hopefully – quite life-changing. Certainly thought-provoking.

Yeah, absolutely. Let’s turn to home schooling: so why did you decide to home school?

Lots and lots of different reasons. First of all was my own school experience, which was less than desirable. Secondly because to be able to teach our kids in a way that they could learn a variety of things and not get stuck into a system. Thirdly was faith and morals, definitely, because of certain things being taught in schools, and I can imagine myself rocking up and going ‘You are teaching… what?’ There are so many things that happen in a school that are just so beyond what we can actually do that can be so harmful. And to have a certain degree  – well, ‘control’… ‘influence’ I should say is probably a better word – over those things was very important to be able to give our kids a really broad, rich education, particularly with literature and history as well as the sciences, the arts as much as we could, to be able to give them a chance to develop their own interests, their own qualities, were all very important.

Are you part of a group of home schoolers around where you live that you get together? I know there’s groups like that here in Hobart.

Oh, there are a lot of groups everywhere. And constantly morphing groups. Yes, we’re very much… well, I sort of dabble around in a whole lot of things, but at the root of it I do like the Charlotte Mason approach. Charlotte Mason was a 19^th-century educator, and the most critical to her was the education as a means to develop a life of virtue in a child, through the appreciation, deep appreciation, of the gospels, and history, of art, music, all the good things in the world. Nature, maths, art, sciences. But seen as a very whole and sound, rich, deep dynamic thing, but all contributes to the flowering of the human person. And that was ‘Yes!’. I don’t know whether I’m actually achieving that! (laughs) All these things are always a work in progress.

That’s absolutely right. School teachers are human beings just as much as mothers are human beings, so we’ve got to –

And children are themselves!

And children are, that’s exactly right. Each one of us is fallible, but each one has something to bring to the equation as well.

That’s right. But the integrity of the human person is just something that’s just so important, and that’s something that I do try and express in my writing as well as in life, that this is just so vital, our relationships, our person, who we are and what we are here for, is one of the most fundamental questions.

Yeah, absolutely. And a continual growth questions over life. I know that I’m asking that question and changing the answer about every 5 years or so! (both laugh)

That just reminds me of the Facebook post I put up this morning about the philosophers. ‘Who are we?’ ‘Philosophers!’ ‘What do we want?’ ‘Uhh…’

‘What do we want?’

‘Why are we here?’ (laughing)

Definitely. And you have the time! I guess that’s the thing, that in your home school – well, I guess in your daily routine, you have the time to ask those deep questions and think it through.

Yes, yes, yes. At least I do have the time to ask them, I don’t know whether my children ask them! They have to do maths. ‘Do you really want me to do that , or can I do something? And when are we going to make gingerbread men?’

And they’re the really big questions.

Yes!

Cool. So when do you feel close to God?

When do I feel close to God? I go through my phases. When do I feel close to God? You know, possibly more when things go wrong than when things go right? You know, you’re going through those hard times and you just throw yourself at God’s feet. And those hard times happen actually quite a lot. So that happens often. It would be those times, yes, in prayer. There are times also, the funny things, things like the washing up, the kitchen sink, the clothesline. It’s those vacant times, those times when your mind is often free- doing the ironing – that you can actually go down and pray. Then I’ve developed a really renewed interest in reading the Bible. The Bible’s really come alive for me lately. At the moment I’m actually reading Mark’s gospel with my kids. And it’s been a really fascinating insight into Jesus’ public life and how we deal with other people. And seeing these messages come through, and these insights in to human nature, and some of the scurrilous characters. And it’s a human freedom. And Jesus’ respect with that has just been an amazing thing. You know, the leper that Jesus  cures, and then he says ‘Show yourself to the priest,’ ‘as per Jewish custom, ‘but don’t tell anyone.’ And the fact that Christ commanded ‘Don’t tell anyone’ and he did, is so illustrative of our freedom. And God knew he was going to do that anyway. (lauhgs)

But to illustrate that he didn’t talk about our Lord because he was commanded to, but because he wanted to. And these sorts of insights have just been great. Today we read about Salome, and the dance before Herod, and John the Baptist’s martyrdom, and the head of John the Baptist is on the platter, and Max my 13-year-old just said ‘Oh… yuck!’ But the wickedness, you know, the wickedness, the conspiracy of the mother and daughter, and the king who was just so keen to please and to show himself off as being able to fulfil whatever he oathed, and not really caring what he did, it was such a boast, and it’s just so awful! That sort of love for the world compared to what Christ instructs the disciples before, of going out and preaching from every village and if they reject you, just shake the dust off your feet and continue on, and don’t worry about it. So it was just a fascinating juxtaposition, and coming into the Bible like that and especially doing it with kids has just been wonderful. So lots of food for thought there.

Absolutely. I was listening to a podcast where the guy was saying that good literature can stand being read over and over again, and I think if there’s any book that can handle that it’s the Bible. You read it, and you read it again next week something new is going to pop out at you, next year something completely different, so it’s amazing. It’s an amazing gift to us.

Mind you, I never would have admitted to that at the age of 13 or 14. Sceptical nonsense! Crap book! Sorry. (laughs) So in my maturity I am coming to develop more of a respect for it.

Too real, too real. (both laugh)
Okay, what’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

How good it is. Look, the fact that it’s so simple, really. It is so simple. That there only are 10 commandments and if we actually followed them life is pretty good. That when we trust in our Lord, that the graces that come from that trust are immense and wonderful. That there is a wonderful… that relationship we can have with God, and that God wishes to have with us. How special is that?

Yeah. It’s amazing.

And the goodness of life that comes, and such a positive, vibrant force. I think that’s what’s so shocking about Christianity, is the fact that it is so positive. And that this rooting on love, with faith, hope, and love together, is just so astounding. Because it is so natural to us to love. And the fact that that can be realised in all its fullness, finally in heaven of course, is just the most amazing thing.

Yes, I think we forget – I agree – just how good Christianity is. How good God is. Even the word ‘good’ gets taken and given a twist to stop it meaning what it actually means, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to be a Christian.

Yes. It’s funny – my thirteen-year-old, the one who objected to the martyrdom of John the Baptist, we had a chat earlier about the Garden of Eden and the first sin. The ‘do not eat from the tree of Good and Evil,’ and why not? Really, because we couldn’t handle the consequences of it. The knowledge of evil for man was just more than he could bear, and God knew that in His goodness, but we did it. And it’s that corruption of our innocence, that shock… you know when children suddenly see something that is not very nice, and that scarring that happens upon them, and that’s what happened to us. We find evil just unbearable. And when we can’t decide between good and evil, because our understanding has been blurred, the difficulty we have, the tragedy that’s there… and it’s hear-rending, in a sense. But we write good books about it so it’s alright.

Everything is grist for the mill for the book. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us today Annette, it’s been wonderful.

Thank you Ruth. Good to see you again.

Good to see you again! Even if not in person. And I will make sure – because I’m sure there’s so many people listening who want to read your books now – I’ll make sure that’s all in the show notes so people can find them and read them, because they’re excellent.

Thank you, thank you.

Today’s guest is Amber. Amber and I met at a panel at the Pilgrim Arts Festival down at Huonville, and she talked about her writing and how that helped her process her mental health issues that she might have. I thought what she said was really good, so I asked if she’d come on the podcast, and she’s being very brave.

(laughs) I don’t feel brave.

You’ve done well. So, very welcome Amber.

Thank you.

We’re going to start where we always start- and she’s prepared, so this is wonderful – how did you become a Christian?

So when I was 15 – I’ve always had asthma – I had a very severe asthma attack, and started to die, and then I went down the white tunnel. And I heard a voice, and it said ‘It’s not your time to die, you must go back. There’s something you must do.’ Now, I wasn’t from a Christian family, so all I knew was that there was a God and that He’d reached out to  me for some reason.

I started going to various churches, and what usually happened what that at first they’d be really loving, and forgiving and beautiful people, and then they’d start presenting me with a lot of rules. Rules were stuff like who to date, what books to read, what to wear, and I just didn’t – it felt too restrictive for me, and I didn’t think it was for me, so I left.

So then fast forward to the year 2000, I ran into an old friend and she’d changed dramatically. She’d been really quiet, and sort of in on herself and depressed, and now she was all bubbly and enthusiastic, and I’m like ‘Well, what’s this about?’ and she’d grown in her Christian walk. So I agreed to come to church with her and she said her testimony, and I was very moved, and I refused to become a Christian. And then I went back to the church another time and they said ‘Christianity’s not really about rules, it’s about a relationship with Jesus.’ So I’m like ‘Okay God, alright I give in, I’ll become a Christian.’ So that was in 2001.

We’ve talked about the fact that you have some mental health struggles. What sort of mental health struggles do you have?

I’m going to sort of describe it first. So from a really young age I had anxiety and depression. Really young, like probably primary school. I was able to live a relatively normal life until 2002. In 2002 I went psychotic and my depression went extremely severe, and I was no longer able to function or work. So my main symptoms are a combination of depression and psychosis. So many different diagnoses, I don’t think I’ll go into them.

So what usually happens in the depression comes first, and I start feeling so bad that my thinking becomes bad, and then the psychosis and the voices can start. They’re very negative voices, telling me I’m evil, telling me that I should harm myself. After each episode I feel guilty and scared; guilty for burdening so many other people and lashing out at people, and scared that I might actually hurt myself at well. So I was in hospital pretty much all the time from 2003 to 2009, but I stabilised from 2010 until 2017, and I was able to work and do some mental health advocacy, and I also did some qualifications in mental health at TAFE, to help other people. But then, after a very short marriage, everything went bad for the last 2 years. So I’ve been extremely unwell since 2017. I’m hopeful that I’ll stabilise again. I’m getting some NDIS support: an extra psychologist, extra psychiatrist, so hopefully – it just takes so long for those supports to be there, but I’m hoping that with that extra support I’ll start to improve again.

We’re getting better at mental health, I think – we’re getting better at understanding it, and we’re getting a bit better at dealing with it –

No.

– but I know you’ve suffered a bit with a bit of stigma and stuff…

Yeah. I think we’re getting better at some illnesses, but the severe end… no.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Yeah, people get scared of psychosis, but look at the stigma. When I have depression that’s not psychotic, people are more understanding. But when they realise that it’s not just depression and that I’ve actually got psychosis, then… yeah.

I think all of us suffer a bit – we have down days and whatever, so we can probably relate a bit better to that, but when you get to psychosis, we just don’t understand it.

Yeah. The other thing is that there’s been a lot of awareness around depression, there hasn’t really been a lot of awareness around psychosis.

No, you don’t hear about that much at all. So what sort of stereotypes and stigmas have we had?

So one time I went to the Royal [Hobart Hospital]. It was with a friend, and she was having heart palpitations. We were both on a strong anti-psychotic, which can cause heart palpitations. So I said to the nurse ‘We’re both on this medication,’ and then I said to the nurse ‘Do you know my sister? She’s a doctor at this hospital.’ And the nurse looked at me, so shocked, and said ‘Your sister’s a doctor? You’ve got schizophrenia – are you the black sheep of the family?’ And that was from a mental health nurse.

Wow.

And the flip side of that is, well, you’re obviously intelligent and articulate, therefore you don’t need any help. You’re obviously able to manage.

I guess because it’s a brain – we expect your brain to either completely work or completely not work, and that’s not the way it works at all, is it?

No.

So that would be quite hard to deal with, I’m sure.

Yeah. I’m writing my memoir, and part of that is so people can understand, and so they can know what to do, and so they’re less frightened. There are times to be frightened – I think if someone’s self-harming I think it’s fine [to be frightened], but not generally.

I guess like with your asthma, as a general thing you’re good and you keep it under control, but if you’re having a severe asthma attack then that’s time to step in and do the emergency care, and it’s very similar to that.

That’s right, it’s the same. Except that I went to a hospital a couple months ago with an asthma attack. I was treated like royalty, they were so respectful and compassionate. Go in there when you’re feeling suicidal, and they’re horrible. They often send you home saying you’re not suicidal enough, or they tell you that they’re manipulating them, or misbehaving, or that it’s a choice that you’re making rationally.

So we’ve got a long way to go. So if we have friends who are dealing with a mental illness of some sort, how do you think we can best help them?

I’ve got some stuff written down… where’s my mouse gone? There we go. As I said, like when people are suffering from an asthma attack, respect and compassion are the things that are needed, and also look at people as individuals. Just because someone has a certain diagnosis doesn’t mean anything much about their personality. Someone might be really sporty and they’ve got psychotic illness, someone might be more into writing like me. Someone might like gardening, someone will be intelligent while another person is creative, you know.

So it’s a case of ‘Let’s look at you as a whole individual and say “Right, what are your hobbies and interests?” Let’s meet on that level.

What are your strengths as well? What are your character strengths as well? Is someone a good listener? We’re all people. Except if it’s life-threatening, just approach the people as people. The other thing is that when there is a crisis, like if someone’s about to self-harm or whatever, I would then get them to hospital. Call the ambulance. Don’t let yourself try and do that yourself. Some people like trying to take the knife themselves, or confiscate… no. That’s not what to do. Also don’t tell people that voices are not real, because they’re real to me. They’re part of my experience. You can be just as traumatised by voices as you can by real events.

Because it’s your brain that’s processing this, in the same way that it processes the real events.

The other thing I would like to add, is when someone’s well – and if they have a support worker or a psychologist they can do it with them – get them to write down what helps, so then when they are in crisis, or even just a little bit unwell, you know what to do. Different things work for different people.

So what you’re saying there I think is have the conversation as well. Don’t be scared to say ‘Okay, I know you’re suffering with this mental illness, how’s the best way to help you out through this?’

Yeah, exactly. But also do that when they’re well.

When they’re well, yeah. Because I think when people are well, we try to avoid it. We try to say ‘Okay, well let’s pretend this thing doesn’t exist.’ When maybe it’s better to say ‘We know this exists, we know you’re well at the moment, how do we deal with it when you’re not?’

It’s the same as having an asthma plan. It’s more complicated, but it’s the same process. I don’t expect people to be a psychologist, you know. Stuff people have done is cooked a meal, that’s nice. Pray with you, because often I can’t pray. Read the bible. Sometimes little gifts. Just loving me. Saying ‘I love you, and so does God, and so does the cat’ or you know, whoever. But it does depend on the person, and people with a psychotic illness are not all the same, at all. Just as different as, I don’t know, people who are Christians.

Exactly. Can’t just put you all in a bucket. I remember I had a friend who was having a psychotic breakdown, and I didn’t recognise it. And she kept telling me she was going to be fine, and we sort of didn’t know where to go from there. Afterwards, looking back on it I thought ‘Oh, we probably should have brought her to our house’, or brought her to the hospital as you say, called an ambulance, but I guess that’s just a case of we need more education in that sort of thing.

Yeah, and you need to establish a relationship and a rapport with someone, and then say ‘What sort of things help you?’ It’s harder when they’re in denial, it’s much harder. It’s the same process, it’s just much harder. I’ve never…. Well. I guess I’ve been in denial, yeah. But I don’t think I am at the moment. I might be wrong.

It’s just like any other chronic illness, I guess. It’s a daily walk, and you just take it day by day.

Yeah, it is.

So you’ve used creative writing to help you with your illness – want to tell us how that’s helped?

When I’m really unwell, like when I’m at crisis point, it doesn’t help to write. I can’t write, I cant even think. So I don’t do that. I am writing about my illness in a memoir, and I’m studying creative writing through Tabor Adelaide, which is a Christian uni in Adelaide. It’s a subject I’m writing about to help people know what to do, to help people feel less alone if they’re going through it, and I’ve also done a lot of political advocacy and stuff so those in powerful positions know what to do too.

But on a personal level, writing makes me happy.

Writing makes me happy too. That’s why I do it – it’s a better day when you write.

Oh, it’s more than that. I feel at one with God, and with the Universe, and that this is what I’m meant to be doing. I don’t know why it took so long for me to realise that. I think maybe that near death experience, there’s something I must do – I think it might be writing. Because I can’t think of anything else that gives me such pleasure, and also it’s my greatest talent as well, you know? Reading and writing is probably my talent and has been since I was 3 or 4.

That was going to be my next question – have you always been writing, all through?

Yeah. So when I was in preschool, in kindergarten, I couldn’t write so I sat with the teacher aide and dictated stories to her and illustrated them. I refused to play, I wanted to be a writer.

So do you write other things? I know you’re writing a memoir at the moment – have you written other fiction or non-fiction?

Yeah – poetry and journalism mainly, yeah. And non-fiction. I have written fiction, but the main thing is I want to take fictional techniques and use them to tell a real story. What I find is a love reading memoir, but some of them aren’t very well-written. They’re great stories, but… so that’s why I’m doing the study and taking such a long time on my work, so that it will be well-written as well as a good story.

Absolutely. So can you share some of your writing with us?

I’m going to share, but it is… just for those who might be triggered, it is about a suicide attempt and it does go into detail, so if you’re going to be triggered by that, just shut off now.

Turn off now.

I’ll just read this out.

It was the 15^th September 2004.  I was half sitting, half lying on a cold, hard bed in the Emergency Department of the Alice Springs hospital.  The fluorescent lights bored into my already dilated eyes.  I was struggling to breathe and the nurses had to keep increasing the oxygen.  The charcoal they gave me to drink tasted like chalk and stained my fingers and my face.  The drip in my arm felt like being attached to a tap that won’t turn off.   But the worst thing was the heart monitor.  It kept beeping uncontrollably.

I tried to convince myself that heart monitors always beeped like that but I knew deep down that wasn’t true.  And people kept staring at me, staff mainly.  They would walk up to me, stare for a while and then walk back.  I tried to calm myself by humming the tune to ‘The Wheels on the Bus went ‘round and ‘round.’  It didn’t really help much but it was something to distract me.

‘Am I going to be okay?’ I asked the nurse.  ‘We’ll do our very best for you,’ she answered.  That wasn’t the answer I was longing to hear.  I wanted to know that everything was fine.  But it clearly wasn’t.

The truth is I had planned my death – the day, the hour, the method – cold bloodedly like a stalker preparing to snare his victim.  I had told my doctor that I needed to be on a higher dose of my anti-depressants so that I had access to more tablets in which to do the damage.  I wrote a detailed note to my family and included the phone numbers of the friends I wished to be informed of my death. I even bought my family a book called ‘Surviving Suicide’, which I hid under my bed.  People often say that suicide is a selfish act.  But even as I planned my demise I still thought of loved ones.

 

 

 

So what, then, was I thinking?  According to the ‘Black Dog’ website there are many complex factors that contribute to suicide.  They include things like trauma and mental illness.  But that wasn’t why I wanted to destroy myself.  I attempted suicide because I felt guilty.  In fact I felt so guilty that I thought my death would be a kind of freedom for my family. They had tried so hard to help me in so many ways.  But despite this I just kept getting worse.

I became severely depressed and psychotic in 2002 while teaching at a local high school.  Not only was I unable to work I was even unable to cook or clean up after myself.  To make matters worse I had become romantically entangled with a very unstable young man.  My dad, who is a psychologist, thought he could help me.  I moved from Hobart to Alice Springs to live with him.  My stepmother and my 10 year old sister also lived there.

They made sure I ate healthily and exercised.  I was referred to a psychologist and a psychiatrist.  I also tried hard at first.  I took my medication and tried various strategies and techniques.  But nothing worked.  Eventually my father told me that he could no longer cope with me.  That triggered a huge red raw bundle of emotions, including guilt.

Before I took the medication that almost killed me I drank some beer.  For some reason having a beer helps me concentrate and relax.  After that I got out the three packets of anti-depressants that I had chosen to take.  Each packet had 30 tablets in it.  So I took 90 tablets.  It’s hard to swallow that many tablets.  By the time I had finished swallowing them I felt so nauseas that it would have been impossible to take more.  Then I made a phone call to my father telling him to cancel his visit because I wasn’t feeling up to it.

My father, my stepmother and my 10 year old sister came around about half an hour later anyway.  I guess they were worried about me.  My sister excitedly ran up the stairs to my room.  She was calling out my name.  When she got to me I could barely walk. I saw her face turn from excitement to shock.  And my father was really angry with me for exposing my sister to my attempt at self-murder. ‘You have traumatised your sister,’ he said in a voice so quiet it was almost strangled.  I had been so consumed by my own problems that I had forgotten how I would affect this young girl, this sister, who I loved.

As my stepmother drove me to the hospital my sense of guilt became so strong I couldn’t think of anything else.  I wanted some tangible way to show that I was sorry.  Especially to my sister.  It suddenly occurred to me that maybe my family didn’t want me dead as I had supposed.  In my psychotic mind I had done it for them.  I was all muddled up in the head.  When my dad said he couldn’t cope my mind interpreted it as both colossal rejection and a lack of love.  Then there were the voices.  Always saying I was evil.  They never stopped.

 

 

 

I’m lucky that I didn’t attempt suicide in the Middle Ages.  At that time suicide was not only a sin it was an unforgivable sin.  The bodies of people who had completed suicide were dragged through the streets and none of them got a proper burial.  This sort of attitude would have been so hard for the loved ones of that person.

I’m also happy that my illness engulfed me in 2002.  Because just prior to that people, in Australia, people with severe mental illnesses were institutionalised, sometimes for years.  Some of these asylums allowed for very little freedom.  I have heard it said that clients weren’t even allowed to brush their teeth for themselves.

Nowadays there is the opposite problem.  Often people who attempt suicide are sent home a few days later with a psychiatrist referral and no other support.  Because of this ten percent of us are readmitted less than a month later.  This creates what is called ‘the revolving door’ where we just move from crisis to crisis.  And many of us succeed in killing ourselves.  Ten percent of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, for example, complete suicide.  Less than one percent of people without such a diagnosis complete suicide.

The night I tried to end my life was a long night.  Probably the longest night I had ever had.  At one stage I started feeling dizzy and the world was turning grey.  The doctor said, “Keep her conscious,” and increased the oxygen.

After many terrifying hours, the doctors from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) arrived. ICU is a ward where there are more doctors and nurses than on other wards.  I was relieved to be moved in some ways as so many of the doctors and nurses had been staring at me in shock.  I asked them again if I would be alright.  ‘You will require careful monitoring,’ they said.  This, again, was not the answer I wanted to hear.

On the way up to the ICU the nurse turned away from me for a few seconds.  “Why is the patient on a monitor?” the doctor yelled at her.

The view in ICU wasn’t particularly comforting either.  All the other patients were hooked up to the same medical gadgetry that I was.  Some had tubes down their throats and one man was obviously dead. I remember thinking to myself: ‘This is a place where people die.’

This seemed to shock me out of the funk I’d been in for the last 2 years.  I realised that I didn’t want to die.  Not this way.  Not alone in a ward with sick people.  Not by my own hand.  I wanted life to be better but I didn’t want to die. “I’m going to fight,’ I thought to myself.

Morning brought a team of doctors who announced. ‘She’s stabilized,’ as if I wasn’t there.  But I didn’t care much because, oh the relief, they removed the catheter, the oxygen, the heart monitor, the drip, the blood pressure monitor and the pulse monitor.  I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.  I couldn’t see properly and my heart was pounding but I was out of danger.

The afternoon brought an admission to the psychiatric ward and a visit from my family.  I apologised and said that I wouldn’t do it again.  They were angry.  ‘You could have had a stroke and ended up in a wheelchair,’ my stepmother said. ‘We’re all angry with you,’ Dad echoed. ‘You nearly died by your own hand.’ My sister distracted herself by running around .  I would have cried but I felt too numb.

According to Psychology today ‘…suicide is seldom the product of rational deliberation…but mostly an act of uncontrollable anguish and despair.’  In my case this was partly true.  I certainly felt uncontrollable emotions but I had also deliberated.  Maybe not in an entirely rational way but I had still planned carefully.

This attempt on my life made me rethink everything.  It was a complete shock.  I realised there might be a way out of this but I didn’t know what that way was.  There are no easy answers to this conundrum.  I needed medication and psychological support – and lots of it!  But I also needed hope.  And meaning.  And part of that meaning involves writing this story.  I hope that sharing what I went through will shed some light on what its like for people in dark places.

We need, as a society, to love those of us who are suicidal.  Even if we don’t love ourselves.  Mentally ill people have the same needs as anyone else.  We need love, hope and meaning.  I want people to understand what it’s like for those of us who aren’t coping and, in that understanding, be willing to reach out.  Don’t be afraid of us.  Fear doesn’t help.  Love does.

That’s the end.

That’s beautiful. Thank you very much.

I thought it might be traumatic.

It’s deep. Yes, traumatic as well, but…

It’s traumatic for me. I felt like I was gonna cry, with my little sister. That’s the thing that makes me want to cry.

I guess you were so turned in on yourself you didn’t realise what was going to happen to those around.

No. No, I didn’t. I was so consumed by my own problems and my own thinking. Like, I would never have deliberately tried to hurt her.

No, that’s right.

I still feel dreadful that I did. Even though she’s fine now.

Absolutely. Tell us, when do you feel close to God?

I feel close to God when I write, even if I’m not writing specifically Christian things. Sometimes weirdly I also feel close to God after I come out of a psychotic episode. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it’s God comforting me, and me having the realisation that although I might be misunderstood by people, I won’t be misunderstood by Jesus. That He understands, and He’ll be with me. So last year I was in hospital for 3 months, and I read all 4 of the Gospels. And that was really comforting, and striking as well with Jesus. It was like I was getting to know a close friend all over again, who continues to surprise me and continues to love me. Because I feel very unlovable, but I’ve got to keep reminding myself that God loves me. And I think my Christian friends also help me feel close to God at various times. They’ve always been generous, supportive, comforting. They’ll pray with me when I can’t pray. They’ll look for comforting things in the bible, they’ll step in in terms of my spiritual health when I’m too unwell to do it myself.

Awesome. That’s what the Body of Christ is for, isn’t it?

Yeah, and as I said also they do non-spiritual things as well, which is helpful.

I think there’s something very spiritual about bringing somebody a meal when they need one. What do they call it? Jesus with skin on.

So what’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

Because we’re talking about mental health, this is something that really frustrates me: God can do whatever He wants, right? And if He wants to heal people, He’ll heal them. But He doesn’t always. Apostle Paul was not healed. I have not been healed. And not being healed is not necessarily because I’m demon-possessed or I don’t have any faith. In fact I would say that it takes more faith to continue as a Christian when you’ve got severe mental health problems going on than it does to be healed. I mean, I’d love it if I was healed! But that’s not my story. It’s not me that makes that decision. I think if people want to pray for my healing, great!

‘Thank you!’

Thank you! Do it. But don’t criticise me for not being healed. So what I find particularly comforting in Christianity is not the fact that it guarantees you an easy life, because my life is not easy. But the fact again that Jesus walks alongside me in my suffering, and promises me a time in the afterlife when there’ll be no suffering. So that’s something comforting to look forward to too: that this suffering, even if it goes for all my earthly life, won’t go on into eternity.

Amen. Thank you so much for sharing with us so deeply, I really appreciate it.