Those thoughts began to intrude even during the day and in normally happy circumstances. I’d been struggling with feelings of despair and the sense that my life was always going to be difficult. God didn’t seem to answer my prayers.
One day I sat on the high kitchen countertop, watching my loving mum cook dinner, which I usually found reassuring and relaxing. But suddenly these negative thoughts overcame me. It struck me that I didn’t want to stick around and be a burden to her. I had the urge to throw myself off the counter. I looked down. I tried to work out what angle I should use to make sure I snapped my neck and killed myself.
But I talked myself out of doing it, mostly because if I failed to kill myself, I’d have to explain why I was in such despair. The fact that I came so close to hurting myself that way frightened me. I should have told my mother what I’d been thinking, but I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to scare her.
I was young, and even though I was surrounded by people who loved me, I didn’t reach out and tell them the depth of my feelings. I had resources but didn’t use them, and that was a mistake.
If you feel overcome by dark moods, you don’t have to handle it yourself. Those who love you won’t feel burdened. They want to help you. If you feel you can’t confide in them, reach out to professional counselors at school, at work, in your community. You are not alone. I was not alone. I see that now, and I don’t want you to ever come as close as I did to making a fatal mistake.
But at that time I was becoming swept up in hopelessness. I decided that to end my pain, I had to end my life.
A CLOSE CALL
One afternoon after school I asked my mother if she could put me in the bath to soak for a while. I asked her to shut the door when she left the bathroom. Then I put my ears under water. In the silence, very heavy thoughts ran through my mind. I had planned in advance what I wanted to do.
If God will not take away my pain and if there is no purpose for me in this life … if I’m here only to experience rejection and loneliness … I’m a burden to everyone and I have no future … I should just end it now.
As I mentioned when I described learning to swim, I’d float on my back by filling my lungs with air. Now I tried to gauge how much air to keep in my lungs before I flipped over. Do I hold my breath before I turn over? Do I take a full deep breath, or do I just do half? Should I just empty my lungs and flip over?
I finally just turned and plunged my face under water. Instinctively, I held my breath. Because my lungs were strong, I stayed afloat for what seemed like a long time.
When my air gave out, I flipped back over.
I can’t do this.
But the dark thoughts persisted: I want to get out of here. I just want to disappear.
I blew most of the air out of my lungs and flipped over again. I knew I could hold my breath for at least ten seconds, so I counted down … 10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 …
As I counted, an image flashed in my mind of my dad and mum standing at my grave crying. I saw my seven-year-old brother, Aaron, crying too. They were all weeping, saying it was their fault, that they should have done more for me.
I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them feeling responsible for my death for the rest of their lives.
I’m being selfish.
I flipped back over and drew a deep breath. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave my family with such a burden of loss and guilt.
But my anguish was unbearable. That night in our shared bedroom, I told Aaron, “I’m planning to commit suicide when I’m twenty-one.”
I thought I could stick it out through high school and university maybe, but I couldn’t see myself beyond that. I didn’t feel like I could ever get a job or get married like other men. What woman would want to marry me? So the age of twenty-one seemed like the end of the road for me. At my age, of course, it also seemed like a long time away.
“I’m telling Dad you said that,” my little brother replied.
I told him not to tell anyone and closed my eyes to sleep. The next thing I knew, I felt the weight of my father as he sat down on my trundle bed.
“What is this about you wanting to kill yourself?” he asked.
In a warm and reassuring tone, he talked to me about all the good things awaiting me. As he spoke, he combed my hair with his fingers. I always loved it when he did that.
“We will always be here for you,” he reassured me. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise we will always be here for you. You are going to be fine, son.”
A loving touch and caring gaze is sometimes all it takes to put a child’s troubled heart and confused mind at ease. My father’s reassurance that things would be okay was enough in that moment. He convinced me with his comforting tone and touch that he believed we would find a path for me. Every son wants to trust his father, and that night he gave me something to hold on to. To a child, there is no assurance like a father’s. My dad was generous with such things and good at expressing his love and support for all of us. I still didn’t understand how everything would work out for me, but because my daddy told me they would, I believed they would.
I slept soundly after our talk. I still had occasional bad days and nights. I trusted my parents and held on to hope for a long time before I actually formed any vision of how my life might unfold. There were moments and even longer periods of doubt and fear, but fortunately this was the lowest point for me. Even now I have my down times like anyone else, but I never again considered suicide. When I look back on that moment and reflect on my life since, I can only thank God for rescuing me from my despair.
HOLDING ON TO HOPE
Through my speaking engagements in twenty-four countries, DVDs, and millions of YouTube.com views, I’ve been blessed to reach so many with a message of hope. Think about just how much joy I would have missed experiencing if I had taken my life at the age of ten. I would have missed the extraordinary opportunity of sharing my story and what I’d learned with more than 120,000 people in India, another 18,000 in a bullring in Colombia, and 9,000 during a thunderstorm in Ukraine.
In time I came to understand that even though I didn’t take my life that dark day, God did.
He took my life and gave it more meaning and more purpose and more joy than a ten-year-old boy could ever have understood.
Don’t you make the mistake I nearly made.
If I had remained facedown in six inches of water back in 1993, I might have ended my temporary pain, but at what cost? That despairing child could not possibly have foreseen the joyful man swimming with great sea turtles off the Hawaiian coast, surfing in California, or scuba diving in Colombia. Even more important than those adventures are the many lives I might never have touched.
I’m just one small, tiny example. Pick any true-life hero, whether it’s Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, or the Reverend Martin Luther King and you’ll find someone who had to weather adversity—prison, violence, even the threat of death—but held on to the belief that their dreams could prevail.
When negative thoughts and dark moods come to you, remember that you have a choice. If you need help, reach out for it. You are not alone. You can choose to picture better days and to perform actions that will make them real.
Consider what I was up against as a boy and look at my life now. Who knows what great days and wonderful achievements await you? Who knows how many lives we can make better by serving as someone else’s miracle? So walk with me, the man with no arms and no legs, into a future filled with hope!
THREE
Full Assurance in the Heart
Faith is defined in the Bible as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You and I could not live without faith, without putting our trust in something for which we have no proof. Most often we talk about faith in terms of religious beliefs, but there are many other types of faith that are part of each day. As a Christian, I live according to my belief in God. Even though I can’t see Him or touch Him, I know in my heart tha
t He exists, and I put my future in His hands. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but because I believe in Him, I know who holds tomorrow.
That is one form of faith. I have faith in many areas of my life. I accept that there are certain elements I can’t see, touch, or feel, but I believe in them anyway. I trust that oxygen exists, and I trust that science is correct in saying that we need it to survive. I can’t see, touch, or feel oxygen. I just know it is there because I am here. If I am alive, then I must be breathing it, so oxygen must exist, right?
Just as we must have oxygen to live, we must trust in certain unseen realities to survive. Why? Because we all face challenges. You have them. I have them. There simply are times in our lives when we can’t see a way out, and that is where faith comes in.
I received an e-mail recently from a woman named Katie who had been laid off from her job because of her medical problems, which have included nearly twenty surgeries. She’d been born without a femur bone in one leg, which had to be amputated when she was a toddler. Now in her thirties and married, Katie told me she often struggled with the “Why me?” question.
After watching one of my videos, Katie realized that sometimes we just cannot know “Why me?” We must trust that God’s plan for us will be revealed in time. Until then we must walk in faith.
“I thank you with all my heart. I now believe that I, like you, am God’s chosen one,” she wrote. “One day I hope I’ll have the honor of meeting you in person to wrap my arms around, hug, and thank you for helping me open my eyes to see the light.”
Katie found strength and hope only after she decided to trust in what she could not see or understand. That’s exactly how faith works. You will encounter challenges that initially seem insurmountable. While we wait for a solution, faith may be all we have to hang on to, and sometimes simply trusting that there will be an answer will get you through those darkest moments.
That is why I talk about FAITH as an acronym: Full Assurance In The Heart. I may not be able to produce evidence for all that I believe in, but I feel fully assured in my heart that I am much closer to the truth by living with faith than I would be by living in despair. When I talk to thousands of schoolchildren each year, I often explore the notion of trusting in what we can’t see. (Sometimes the little ones are a bit frightened of me at first. I don’t know why because we’re always about the same height. I tell them I’m small for my age.)
I joke with them until they feel comfortable with me. Once they’re accustomed to my lack of limbs, I find most kids are fascinated by my little left foot. I’ll see them pointing or staring, so I wave it at them and make a joke about “my little chicken drumstick.” That always gets a laugh because the description is quite accurate.
My sister, Michelle, who is six years younger than me, was the first to make that observation. With our brother, Aaron, and our parents, we often traveled on long family trips in which we three kids were packed like cordwood in the backseat of the car. Like most dads, ours didn’t like to stop once we hit the road. When we grew hungry, we’d drop big hints to my dad and mum.
When we were absolutely famished, we’d go a little crazy and pretend to take bites out of each other. On one trip Michelle announced that she intended to chew on my little left foot “because it looks just like a chicken drumstick.” We laughed about it, but I forgot about her description. Then a few years ago, Michelle brought home a puppy. The little pup tried to chew on my foot whenever I sat down. I’d nudge him away, but he kept coming back to gnaw on it.
“See, it still looks like a chicken drumstick even to my puppy!” Michelle said.
I loved it! Ever since then, I’ve told that story in my speeches to schoolchildren. But once I introduce my left foot, I ask kids if they think I have just one foot. This question always throws them for a loop because they can see only one foot, but it would make sense for me to have two.
Most kids go with what they can see. They usually tell me they think I have just one foot. I then produce for them Junior, my even smaller right foot, which I normally keep tucked in. Sometimes I shock them by sticking out my right foot and wiggling it. They usually shriek and scream. It’s funny because kids are so straightforward. They admit that they have to see it to believe it.
I then encourage them, just as I now encourage you, to trust that there are possibilities for your life. The key to moving forward, even in hard times, is to let your vision for your life be guided not by what you can see but by what you can imagine. That’s called having faith.
TRUST IN FLIGHT
My imagination flows through God’s eyes. I trust Him. I have full assurance in my heart that even without arms and legs, I can build a wonderful life. In the same way, you should feel that nothing is out of your reach. Have faith that if you do everything you possibly can to achieve your dreams, your efforts will be rewarded.
Sometimes our trust is tested before our hard work pays off. I was reminded of this in 2009 while on a speaking tour of Colombia, in South America. I was booked to speak in nine cities in ten days. With so many miles to cover in such a limited amount of time, the tour booker chartered a small airplane to take us from town to town. There were eight of us on the flights, including our two pilots, both of whom were named Miguel and neither of whom spoke much English. During one of the flights, everyone in the passenger cabin was startled to hear the plane’s computer call out an automated warning: “Pull up, pull up!” The alert was in English!
The computer voice tracked our rapid descent with increasing urgency, giving our plane’s decreasing altitude. “Six hundred feet!” “Five hundred feet!” “Four hundred feet!” The reports were interspersed with continuing commands to the pilots to “Pull up! Pull up!”
No one freaked out, but the mood in the passenger cabin was more than a little tense. I asked my caregiver if he thought we needed to be translating the onboard computer warnings from English to Spanish for Captains Miguel One and Two.
“Do you think they really don’t know we’re descending?” he asked.
I didn’t know what to think, but since no one else seemed to feel it was a problem, I followed their lead and tried not to freak out. Much to my relief, we soon landed safely. Later when one of our translators mentioned our moment of panic to our pilots, they had a great laugh.
“We knew what the computer was saying, but we always ignore it when we’re landing,” Miguel Two said through the translator. “You should have more faith in your pilots, Nick!”
Okay, I’ll admit, for a minute there I questioned my trust in the flying Miguels. But most of the time I rest assured that God is looking out for me and my life. I’ll give you a clue about the strength of my trust: I have a pair of shoes in my closet! I truly believe it is possible that someday I will be able to wear them and walk in them. It may happen. It may not. But I believe the possibility is there. If you can imagine a better future, you can believe it. And if you believe it, you can achieve it.
Unlimited vision.
When I went through my period of depression as a ten-year-old, I wasn’t suffering from anything physically. I had no arms and no legs, but I had all I needed to live the rewarding and fulfilling life I have today—with one exception. Back then I was relying only on what I could see. I was focused on my limitations rather than on my possibilities.
We all have limitations. I’ll never be an NBA star, but that’s okay because I can inspire people to be the stars of their own lives. You should never live according to what you lack. Instead, live as though you can do anything you dream of doing. Even when you suffer a setback or a tragedy, there is often an unexpected, totally improbable, and absolutely impossible benefit to be realized. It may not happen right away. You may at times wonder what good could possibly come of it. But trust that it all happens for the good—even tragedies can turn into triumphs.
SURF’S UP
I was in Hawaii for a speaking engagement in 2008 when I met the world-class surfer Bethany Hamilton. You may recall that she lost her l
eft arm when she was attacked by a tiger shark in 2003. She was just thirteen years old when that happened. Prior to the shark attack, Bethany was well known among surfers, but after she survived that tragedy and returned to her sport praising God and thanking Him for his blessings, she became admired internationally for her courageous spirit and her amazing faith. Now, like me, she travels the globe to inspire people and to share her beliefs.
Her goal, she said, is “just to tell about my faith in God and to let everyone know that He loves them and to explain just how much He took care of me that day. I shouldn’t be here because I lost seventy percent of my blood that morning.”
I’d never heard the whole story of what happened that day until our meeting, and I had not realized how close this awesome young lady came to dying. She told me how she prayed as they rushed her to a hospital forty-five minutes away and how her paramedic whispered encouraging words of faith into her ear: “God will never leave you or forsake you.”
Things were looking pretty grim. When they finally arrived at the hospital and hurriedly prepped her for surgery, they found that all of the operating rooms were being used. Bethany was fading fast. But one patient gave up his knee surgery, which was just about to get under way, so his doctor could operate on Bethany. Guess who it was?
Bethany’s own dad!
Amazing, isn’t it? The surgeon was prepped and ready to operate, so they just switched daughter for dad and went to work. The operation saved her life.
Since she was such a healthy, athletic girl and had such an amazingly positive attitude, Bethany bounced back faster than any of her doctors expected. She was surfing again just three weeks after the attack.
During our visit Bethany told me that her faith in God led her to conclude that losing her arm was part of His plan for her life. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she just accepted it and moved on. In her first competition against many of the world’s best women surfers, she finished third—with only one arm! She says that the loss of her arm is a blessing in many ways because now whenever she does well in a competition, it inspires other people that their lives have no limits!