Steve's Story

In my Thursday post, I wrote about Steven Eberhart, who went to grade school and rode the same bus with me when I was a girl. He stabbed an off duty female police officer who did security at a local grocery store. A few years ago, Steve started attending my church briefly. He did not go very long, but while he did he told me that he suffered from depression. On reading his story, I am wondering if he suffered from more than just depression. Did he have a more serious form of mental illness such as schizophrenia which may have caused him to become violent?

I firmly believe that mental illness is not only a psychological disease but also a spiritual ailment. Mental illness is so common in today's world because most people, even some who think they are close to God lack the tools to face life's challenges. Why do some people cruise through life's storms and others crumble? In time I will explain through my writings here why.

For myself, accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, understanding and applying His teachings, reading my Bible and prayer has helped me in a way it is difficult to put into words. I suffered from depression throughout my teen years and was eventually crippled by it beginning in my late 20s throughout much of my 30s. When I realized just how alone and desperate I was for something bigger, permanent, and more meaningful than anything the world has to offer in the long run, I learned what it meant to be born again into a life guided and devoted to God. I was literally cured.

Steve attended the same church where I accepted Jesus Christ. On Thursday I phoned my pastor and we talked awhile about his situation and mental illness. My pastor says that I am her biggest success story. She also has a daughter who is very mentally disturbed and has also had several confrontations with the law. Over the years Pastor Patricia has seen many people go through her church who were ravaged by mental illness and intense spiritual emptiness. Most never applied the precepts that she taught in the pulpit. I did because first I accepted that I had a problem and second I wanted to become what God intended me to be. I learned that I could never be fully cured or rescued from depression by my own efforts, medication, and by going to see counselors. I have had some every good counselors in my day, some who said some good and wise things. One of my counselors confessed to me that she was a Christian. But it was only when I became a Christian too, studied and prayed, did something click inside me. I still battle with self doubt, and I even feel loneliness sometimes, but in the end I always remember that Jesus died for me and everyone else and that God will never abandon me. People come and go out of our lives, but He is eternal and will always be there. We can hold on to Him. In fact, He wants us to hold on to Him.

Yesterday Steve's story was in the newspaper. It can be read here. My mother and I were saying yesterday "If only Steve had kept coming to our church and had alllowed Pastor Patricia to pray for him..."

What has happened to Steve could happen to any of us. There is a war for our minds and souls going on. I will be talking about this too eventually.

After years of debilitating depression, I have been cured by surrender to Jesus Christ. I feel like Job who lost everything that mattered to him, but God, and was granted again even more than he lost because he never lost his faith and love for God. My life is beginning again. Sadly for Steve, it looks like it has ended not in the bodily sense, but spiritually he is dead because of his illness and the possibility that he will not be a free man for a long time. Still for him, because Jesus said,

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7, New International Version)


Please pray for the officer who at the last I heard is still alive and pray also for Steve.

God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5, New International Version)