Kari’s story of transformation started when she was 13 years old in junior high school. Experiencing the typical junior high girl traits, she was moody, emotional, insecure, and wanting to be liked more than anything. Her life was about to be turned completely upside down.
Perfectly Normal to Tumultuous
“My parents went from having an almost perfect marriage to falling apart. My dad went from being seemingly very happy and normal to going through major depression and having suicidal thoughts,” she remembers. He made multiple threats to shoot himself and fell in love with someone much younger than Kari’s mom.
Their home went from perfectly normal to tumultuous and unstable. Her parents were headed for divorce. Kari says, “I hated them both, but they ignored me because they had their own issues. I felt alone and ashamed.”
To escape from it all, Kari started hanging out with much older kids, going to parties, drinking when she could, and occasionally smoking. This was followed by dating several guys who were not God-fearing. “I became so depressed. I would go into my room at night and fantasize about my death and funeral. I would listen to depressing music and write dark poems about death. I thought things would never get better, and my only alternative was suicide.”
She felt like she couldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening—it was so embarrassing, and nobody would understand. She remembers thinking, “I didn’t want to believe in a loving God anymore because in my sheltered and shallow teen mind, certainly He would never allow something like this to happen—let alone to someone like me, a good, church-going girl.”
An Unexplainable Sensation
Kari had it all figured out. She planned her funeral and typed up her obituary. Fortunately, she had a good friend whose parents loved her like she was their own child and a teacher who was very concerned about her. “I guess they noticed signs of my attempted suicide and told my mom,” she recalls. A few weeks before Easter of her eighth-grade year, Kari got off the school bus to find her grandma and mom waiting for her. They drove her to a psychiatric unit in Minnesota, about an hour away from her house.
She says these were the worst days of her life. She had to go to group therapy several times a day, as well as individual therapy. She was subjected to some pretty intense mental and emotional testing. Soon, she discovered that if she lied to the hospital personnel, she would have had more privileges. “I was transferred to a regular hospital room and got the great news that I was going to be released. I was going home. I could continue with my plan to end my life,” she remembers.
The night before her release, she was alone in her room, finalizing her suicide plan in her special notebook. She sat there feeling so sorry for herself.
And then an overwhelming, overpowering, unexplainable sensation came over her and led her to open the nightstand drawer and read the Bible placed there by The Gideons. She opened it to Psalm 22:1 (ESV) and read, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”
That was precisely how she felt. Kari kept reading until she got to Psalm 27:1 (ESV), “The Lord is my light and my salvation…” And then Psalm 27:10 (ESV), “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.”
“You have no idea what that verse did for my soul. There in that hospital room in Minnesota, I gave my life to Jesus Christ, the only One who will ever completely feel my pain and know exactly what I’m going through. The only One who will always love me unconditionally and never leave me.”
The Difference Between Death and Life
Life since that day hasn’t been perfect. Yet she knows God has been faithful and will never abandon her.
Today is much different for Kari. “The Lord gave me a wonderful, godly husband. We are both very active in serving our local church together. We have two sons and a daughter-in-law who love the Lord and are great gifts from God. I have a granddaughter who just turned nine months old.”
For Kari, having a personal relationship with Christ has been the difference between life and death. She says, “Without Christ, I was literally on a path of death—and with Christ, I’m alive. Without Christ, I was lost and hopeless. And with Christ, I’m found and full of hope.”
Each time she tells her story, she is reminded of the pain she experienced. But she is also reminded of the Bible in her hospital room that God used to speak to her heart. “Without that Bible, I would not be alive today,” she exclaims!
