I don't believe death is the worst thing that can happen either. Trust me, my faith pulls me far from that kind of thinking. But I also do not believe someone not in their right mind should be allowed to kill themselves.

I've been in that spot many times myself, and I know from personal experience (and my husband would concur from his own experience), that I am extremely grateful that people intervened and pulled me away from that choice. I didn't really want to die; I simply didn't want to be in the kind of emotional pain and void I was in and at the time, death seemed the only way to achieve that because I had lost the ability to reason, to think, to be at all rational.

I am daily grateful that I am still alive. I have also buried several friends and students who weren't helped in time, and I very much wish they had reached out for help. I have absolutely no regrets that I did not succeed in ending my life. I am absolutely blessed to still be here, to still continue to enjoy my family and my friends and my students, to have lived to see the other side and reach a place of mental health and stability, to live with the promise of a future with my family. I would have lost it all. That would have been a tragedy for me, for my family, and for those around me who I know my life impacts even when I can't always see it.

God wasn't done with me then, and he's not done with me yet. No, I have no fear of death, but it will come in His due time.