Participants:
Series Code: UBR
Program Code: UBR000271A
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00:01 Stay tuned to meet a man who dealt with PTSD
00:03 and tried to end his life. 00:05 My name is Jason Bradley, 00:06 and you are watching Urban Report. 00:34 Hello and welcome to Urban Report. 00:36 My guest today is Tom Mann, 00:38 and he is a man with a powerful testimony. 00:41 Welcome to Urban Report, Tom. 00:43 Thank you, Jason. Glad to be here. 00:44 Good to have you here. 00:45 I mean, we've worked together for years. 00:47 Yeah. Yeah. 00:48 You used to work here, 00:50 and a lot of people at home have heard your voice, 00:51 but now they're getting to see your face too. 00:53 Well, that may be a good or bad thing. 00:55 I don't know. 00:56 Now you worked here before I even got here, 00:59 and this set... 01:00 This set. 01:02 Let me just, 01:03 we were just talking about this a moment ago, 01:05 and that is, I remember 01:06 when there was no dare to dream. 01:08 And I remember when it was a dream. 01:10 And I remember sitting here with your mom 01:13 and interviewing her probably for the first time 01:16 and coming up with a video 01:19 talking about a network that didn't exist. 01:21 Wow. 01:22 And I think this set had just been finished, 01:24 it was around that time. 01:25 So it's kind of like a unique thing 01:28 for me to sit here 01:29 because I remember the beginnings of it 01:30 and how it all started. 01:32 It was an exciting time. 01:34 Praise the Lord, and to see where God has lead it, 01:37 you know, this far. 01:38 Oh, yeah. It's amazing. 01:39 You know, when I worked with you, 01:42 I had no idea about your journey. 01:45 And I remember going 01:46 to the Marion Seventh-day Adventist Church in Illinois, 01:49 Marion, Illinois, 01:51 and you were preaching 01:52 and you shared a little bit of your testimony, 01:53 and I was blown away. 01:56 And I was like, "You know, 01:57 I have to have Tom here for an Urban Report." 02:01 Why don't you share with our viewers 02:03 just a little bit about your upbringing? 02:06 I had a great upbringing, and it's probably... 02:10 I think, for me, the thing is that it was such a blessing. 02:13 I grew up in a Christian home, 02:14 had a mom and dad that loved me, encouraged me. 02:18 I was a quite... 02:19 kind of a creative child. 02:21 Okay. 02:22 And they encouraged both my brother and I. 02:23 I had a brother, I still have a brother. 02:26 And we grew up in a wonderful environment, 02:29 went to a private Christian school 02:30 for 12 years, 02:32 steeped in Bible. 02:35 Everything you could think of that was positive, 02:39 I mean, I had, it was just, the word maybe charmed. 02:43 I mean didn't grow up in a very affluent home 02:46 but I grew up in a typical home. 02:47 My mom and dad both worked. 02:49 My mom worked, 02:50 helped put me through private Christian school. 02:51 It was that kind of thing. 02:53 Okay. Okay. 02:54 And I really had just a great life growing up. 02:59 I knew I was a little bit different 03:00 and I say that because I wanted to go in radio and TV 03:06 even when I was young. 03:07 I don't know why but I did. 03:09 I had a creative mind, I mentioned that. 03:11 And I found I had problems in school. 03:14 I understood everything 03:15 but I just couldn't read that well, 03:17 and I would kind of fake my way through all of that. 03:20 I got through school. 03:21 I spent a lot of time in summer school, 03:23 and my grades were great because of that. 03:25 And I got into college 03:27 because I was the student government president 03:29 of my high school, 03:30 they called it the student... 03:32 the student commission affairs or something, 03:33 commission of student affairs, one of those things. 03:35 And I was that. 03:37 I got into college because of that. 03:39 Okay. 03:40 My ACT scores, those things were pretty low. 03:43 And what I found out as I went along 03:45 is I had a little bit of what's called visual dyslexia. 03:49 And which I found out to be a blessing 03:51 because that's what kind of pushes me 03:53 in the creative side of things. 03:55 Okay. 03:56 You don't have to have all the facts 03:57 but you're able to kind of put things together 03:59 without the facts. 04:00 So what is the visual dyslexia? What is that? 04:03 It's a little bit different. 04:05 It's not when you're reading, turning things around... 04:06 And I had a gentleman 04:09 who was, I think, doing his doctorate, 04:12 his dissertation or something for psychology, 04:16 and he happened to be my principal at my high school. 04:19 And I was working on a radio show for him 04:23 and it was a... 04:25 I had to do this big creative process 04:27 and one day, he said, "Can I study you?" 04:29 And I said, "Sure." 04:30 And he said, "I think I know what's going on with you." 04:32 And he said, "Because you could do these things 04:33 but you have these." 04:35 He said," You weren't that great of a student." 04:37 I'm like, "Yeah, I know that." 04:38 And I avoided it with a passion, you know? 04:41 And I was in college till the time but he did that. 04:43 And the visual dyslexia 04:45 is where it's basically you could read things, 04:50 but I have to read them many times over. 04:53 Now I you could look like... 04:54 Here, you could look at a teleprompter 04:55 and I could read that for some reason on camera, 04:58 but if you give me a big book, 05:00 somebody says, "This is a great book. 05:01 Read this." 05:03 I could spend six months on the first chapter 05:05 just reading over and over and over again. 05:07 I found out I have to read out loud 05:09 and it's just something 05:10 where I'm not able to process going in. 05:14 And you just learn a little bit. 05:15 Some people call it, you know, auditory visual learning. 05:18 And really, that bent, 05:19 but it's a little bit more than that. 05:21 That's what I was diagnosed with. 05:22 So basically, is it like you're trying to read something 05:25 and in order to internalize it, 05:26 you have to read it aloud 05:29 and multiple times to get it to stay? 05:31 I say it's kind of like, 05:33 if somebody wears glasses like I do, 05:35 older I get, the more thicker they get... 05:38 If you take your glasses off, everything's not as clear. 05:40 It's kind of the same thing with me where I can read, 05:43 I could read out loud to you with no problem. 05:46 And those kids' books are great, 05:48 the little bitty ones, 05:49 the Dr. Seuss and all those things, 05:51 I'm great at those. 05:52 I never had a problem with that, 05:53 but anything deeper than that. 05:55 But other than that, 05:56 I really didn't have any problems 05:57 and that was really I felt and I said something, 06:00 "You learn differently, you process differently," 06:02 and it's kind of a thing. 06:05 God made me that way. 06:07 Now it's okay, and I was fine, so. 06:08 Yes. 06:09 Now so okay, 06:11 and you were coming up, 06:12 you went to college, did you finish college? 06:14 No. 06:16 And the reason was, 06:18 part of it was, I just didn't like school. 06:20 I went to two colleges one time. 06:23 I was going to Bible College 06:24 because I kind of felt called to be in the ministry 06:26 or be a pastor. 06:27 And then I was going to a secular college 06:31 for broadcast communications. 06:33 Well, I begged the professors and everyone, 06:36 I wanted internship, 06:37 and I just started taking advanced classes, 06:40 I don't know how I got away with that. 06:42 And I got into the broadcast classes 06:44 at the same time. 06:46 Two weeks after I got out of high school, 06:48 I went around all the radio stations 06:49 saying I want to work on the air, 06:51 and they were like, "Yeah, kid, you can work on the air." 06:53 But this one lady said, "Listen. Go to the college," 06:56 which I was going to at the time, 06:58 University of Memphis, 06:59 "They have a campus radio station. 07:00 Nobody's there." 07:02 And so I went there and volunteered my time, 07:03 five to six hours a day, 07:04 and learned how to work on the air, 07:07 two weeks out of high school. 07:09 And then I wound up working in radio, 07:11 I worked at multiple radio stations. 07:14 And by the time I was 21, 07:15 I was working at one of the top radio stations in town, 07:18 and it just kept growing from there. 07:19 So I was already in the business. 07:20 I was doing some TV, 07:23 all kinds of things at that time. 07:24 And I just... 07:26 I was doing what I was going to school for. 07:29 And I remember, I had a manager one day, 07:32 program director 07:33 at a radio station I was working at, 07:35 and I said, "Hey, can I get a raise 07:37 when I get my graduation degree?" 07:40 That was about a year from there. 07:42 And he looked at me and said, "No." 07:44 And I said, "Why?" 07:45 He said, "Why don't you change your manger 07:46 and go into business or something else?" 07:48 He said, "I didn't hire you because you have your degree. 07:50 I hired you because you're good at what you do." 07:52 And for some reason, I just took that as this thing, 07:55 "Well, maybe I should just not go to school," 07:57 and I did that. 07:58 But it's interesting. 08:01 I had almost four years of college, 08:03 and then the high school I went to 08:05 was very academic and academically inclined. 08:07 Okay. 08:09 So it wasn't that, you know, I didn't have any of that, 08:11 it was just I guess me being me. 08:14 I'm like, "Oh, if I can do this, 08:15 and I don't have to do that, that's great." 08:17 If I can stay away from the books, 08:19 I'm happy if I can just go on the air. 08:21 You know, again, that was my thinking. 08:24 And it worked out really well. 08:27 Well, yes, and you have that voice. 08:30 Like sometimes, I'll turn on channel three, WSIL, 08:34 and then I hear you 08:36 and I'm like, "Oh, that's Tom Mann." 08:38 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 08:40 You have the voice for it. 08:43 And the face, they sometimes say. 08:45 Oh, that's... 08:49 Okay. 08:51 So you went through a couple of situations, 08:54 three major, you had three major events. 08:57 But before we get to those three major events, 09:00 how long were you in radio? 09:01 How long were you in TV? 09:04 For about a decade, 09:05 I was on the air about six days a week, 09:08 which was normal in radio back at that time. 09:11 And I worked almost every kind of format every... 09:16 And I learned so much 09:17 and it was an amazing experience. 09:19 I could remember working at these secular radio stations 09:22 and I remember there was always one individual there 09:26 who was some kind of a believer 09:29 and that was the person that taught me how to do things 09:31 and everywhere I went. 09:34 And I learned, that's how I learned. 09:35 You learn, you know, from working in it. 09:37 And I went to working in television. 09:40 I went to working, you know, throughout, 09:42 so I had a really broad background, 09:44 and somewhere around, I got married. 09:48 And about the time I got married, 09:49 I started a production company. 09:51 I thought I'll do some commercials on the side, 09:53 and I started doing that, and that kept growing. 09:56 And then one of the things I was excited about 09:58 is a lot of ministries would hire me to do their work, 10:02 for everything from their cassette, 10:04 back in the day, cassette tape duplication, 10:07 their editing, 10:08 and putting their radio programs 10:10 or those things, 10:11 I did a lot of that, then I moved into TV later. 10:13 And my companies just started growing. 10:16 I started with one, then I had another. 10:19 So that went really well, 10:21 that was just, as I said, 10:24 it was more like charmed, it was just every... 10:26 it just kept growing, it just got bigger and bigger. 10:30 And I kind of got used to that 10:34 where it seemed very easy where you just did things 10:36 and you were able to make money at it. 10:38 And at the same time, I was excited 10:40 because I got to work with ministries 10:42 and other things like that. 10:43 And then during that time, I got an interest, 10:49 I had a fascination as a kid 10:51 about what firefighters and paramedics did, 10:55 and I always wanted to be one I think, 10:58 and that's really what it was. 10:59 Okay. 11:01 So I remember some of the television series 11:03 that were on networks 11:04 were showing up with police offices, 11:07 and what have you. 11:08 And I wanted to find out how they were taping that. 11:10 So I got involved 11:11 and I wound up riding with firefighters, 11:14 and paramedics, EMTs, 11:16 and the like for almost 10 years 11:18 and capturing them, 11:19 trying to develop first a documentary, 11:21 then working on a television series. 11:22 Okay. 11:24 And that went on for almost 10 years. 11:25 Wow. 11:27 And I had to go through training, 11:28 and so I could go inside a burning buildings 11:30 and tape them doing what they're doing. 11:31 Wow. 11:33 So you went inside burning buildings 11:34 and taped them in that? 11:36 Yeah. Yeah. It was a blast. 11:37 I mean, when I was in my 20s and my 30s, 11:38 that was like, it was just awesome. 11:40 It was an adrenaline rush. 11:42 I can't explain to you what that's like. 11:45 And at the same time, 11:46 I was just, I was fascinated with these individuals 11:49 that were willing to lay down their lives 11:51 and I started experiencing that. 11:54 I had friends that actually died. 11:56 I remember being on the scenes of incidences 11:58 where guys who you were working with, 12:00 they didn't come back. 12:02 And that was very hard. That was the reality of it. 12:05 Rode in New York City, this is before 9/11, 12:08 and that was an amazing experience. 12:11 Standing in front of the World Trade Center 12:13 back in the 90s, 12:15 and I was standing next to a guy 12:17 who was a battalion chief 12:18 that had been at the first bombing 12:20 of the World Trade Center. 12:21 And he was standing there looking at me one day 12:23 and he said, "You know, these buildings, 12:25 if you want to bring these down, 12:27 you can't do what they did back in the early 90s." 12:29 He said, "I was there." 12:31 He was one of the commanders or something. 12:33 And he said, 12:34 "You got to blow it up from above." 12:37 He said, "If you get a tank or truck," 12:38 and he was pointing up at the top 12:40 of the World Trade Center, 12:41 and we're standing right below it. 12:42 He said, "If we put a tank or truck up there 12:44 and it's ignited, 12:45 these buildings will come down like in a pancake." 12:47 And he described what happened on 9/11. 12:49 This was like three or four years before that. 12:51 I was there, right at it, 12:52 didn't think about until that day. 12:54 Wow. 12:55 And I had these, you know, amazing moments 12:57 that I really love, I love doing that. 13:02 But at some point, you know, I went to mass shootings, 13:09 all kinds of things. 13:10 And at some point, it started to affect me, 13:13 and I didn't really realize. 13:15 And I was working on projects. 13:16 I remember learning about PTSD, 13:20 learning about how it affects you, 13:22 and developing things for firefighters 13:27 and paramedics, EMTs. 13:29 I worked for some training networks for them 13:31 and I got into that. 13:34 A lot of footage I shot wound up being on networks 13:36 and just saw anything and everything. 13:40 Just you name it, I saw it. 13:43 And so basically that took a huge toll. 13:47 It did. I didn't realize it. I was still just doing great. 13:51 I didn't bother. 13:53 I could walk into about any scene 13:56 and it got where, 13:58 "Okay, fine, this is such and such." 14:02 "You just got used to it," I used to hear that. 14:04 And that was going on. 14:06 So that was going on, business was going on. 14:08 I had the ebbs and flows, and things like that. 14:11 I had two kids. I mean, I talk about it. 14:15 Basically, the life was great, 14:17 two point two kids, you're living the dream. 14:20 Two point two kids? Yeah. 14:21 You know, I don't know, that's what they say. 14:23 Okay. 14:25 You know, why do they say that? 14:27 I don't know. Who knows? 14:28 But you know, you had all that... 14:32 You know, at the time, wonderful marriage, 14:33 everything that I knew. 14:36 I taught the young marrieds class 14:37 at my church, 14:39 and actively involved 14:40 in those kinds of, you know, those things were going on. 14:44 So I guess, as I think back 14:46 and I'm thinking right now, it's just like, it was great. 14:49 Charmed life, honestly. Everything was great. 14:52 And so at what point... 14:53 Where was the turning point? 14:54 Where did things hit rock bottom for you? 14:58 And here's the thing 14:59 and God turns a lot of things around how things work. 15:04 My first wife one day just up 15:08 and said she didn't want to be married anymore. 15:11 I did not see that coming in a million years. 15:14 And I think I shared a part of this story before 15:17 but it devastated me. 15:19 I was like, "Do what?" 15:21 In fact, we had our usual date night. 15:23 I remember we would go somewhere and eat. 15:24 Yeah. 15:26 She told me that, I thought she was joking. 15:27 I even laughed. 15:28 I said, "That's not a good thing to joke about." 15:30 She said, "I'm serious." 15:31 And within two weeks, she was gone. 15:34 And that was a huge shock 15:36 because, first of all, 15:37 nobody in my family had ever been divorced. 15:40 I kind of grew up in a background that in my mind, 15:44 if you were divorced or anything like that, 15:47 you could never really serve in church again, 15:51 you can never ever be in ministry, 15:53 you can never ever. 15:55 It was over with. I mean that's all it was. 15:57 So everything was over. 16:00 I mean, I stepped away 16:03 from all my positions and things. 16:07 It was hard to work with young marrieds 16:08 when your marriage... 16:10 And it's understandable. I get that. 16:11 Yeah. 16:13 But I had to do that. 16:14 It was very difficult, and that was tough. 16:18 At the same time, shortly after that, 16:22 I wound up, you know, getting a document 16:24 telling me these are the days I get to see my kids 16:27 and these are the days I don't get to see my kids. 16:30 Yeah. 16:31 Now that inside of me, 16:35 it's like, "You're not going to tell me what to do." 16:36 That's really the first thing. 16:38 "Well, these are my kids." 16:39 And I was the dad, I remember going every night, 16:41 I went in and prayed with them, 16:43 and I was busy, but I remember doing that. 16:45 That was a big thing for me to go in, 16:47 and you know, had fun or play with them, 16:50 you know, before they go to bed, 16:51 that kind of thing. 16:52 But I never saw that. 16:54 And they were things that were going on 16:55 with my first wife I didn't realize. 16:57 And this is again part of the healing 16:59 and things that come back. 17:02 And it just ripped my guts out. 17:05 I think Sherry Peters. 17:08 And we started talking about this. 17:10 She mentioned, one time, she said, 17:11 "You were just kind of like 17:13 all the life was drained out of you." 17:14 And I said, "That's what happened." 17:16 So I had that, and then I started having, 17:17 you know, I knew some things were going on with me 17:20 and my thinking 17:21 through all the things I was working 17:23 on through those years. 17:26 That was going on, 17:28 and then within six months after that... 17:29 All the things you were working on like the fire. 17:31 The fire and those things. 17:33 That was bothering me. 17:35 And the last one had happened during 9/11, 17:39 and I was invited to go to the Pentagon, 17:42 and I said, "No, I can't do it." 17:43 And before that, I had been to a mass casualty shooting. 17:47 I mean where two firefighters were killed, 17:50 the sheriff's deputy and several people, 17:53 and I was there. 17:54 There are so many details of that, 17:56 you're on the scene of that, 17:57 and you know, I had to sit in the room 17:59 with one of the victims' body for 20 or 30 minutes, 18:02 and you have these things. 18:04 And so you're dealing with that, 18:06 individuals watching people 18:08 burn to death, all these things. 18:09 These things where I'd witnessed 18:11 through those years, 18:13 shootings, I got shot out, I got pinned down by gunfire, 18:15 I had these things that happened to me. 18:17 That sounded really, you know, over the edge. 18:21 And at the time, I didn't even talk about it, 18:23 it was just kind of what I did. 18:25 And I didn't tell everybody these things were happening 18:28 because I was worried they would not let me continue 18:31 doing what I was doing. 18:33 So I kept these things really tight. 18:34 "What would happen to me?" 18:35 "Don't tell anybody," because I was worried, 18:37 I want to continue shooting and working. 18:38 And I wasn't a firefighter, wasn't a paramedic, 18:40 so I was just a videographer, I was just a video producer. 18:45 But you know, even the Bible says, 18:47 by beholding we become changed. 18:48 And so you were beholding all these scenes, 18:51 you're seeing all of these things, 18:53 taking it all in. 18:54 You weren't necessarily participating, 18:57 but you were capturing it in your mind. 18:59 And so it had an effect on your life. 19:02 So that happened, 19:04 and then the other thing that I wanted to tell you is 19:05 within six months, I lost my house, 19:08 I lost my businesses with an S, I lost everything, 19:12 went from having everything to having nothing. 19:15 So we go to... All of a sudden... 19:18 My parents were having to get me a car. 19:22 I have to go live with them. I have nothing. 19:25 I had everything just six months 19:26 to a year before that. 19:28 I have to go back and get a job, 19:30 and I was sent back working in television station, 19:35 and driving a satellite truck, 19:36 doing live shots, and pretty much by myself. 19:40 It was a very lonely time. 19:43 A friend of mine, he kept calling me Job. 19:47 And it was really... 19:49 And you know, the hard part was, 19:50 I would just sit there, "How did this happen?" 19:53 When I started looking at your story 19:55 and I was thinking about your testimony and everything, 19:57 I was like, "You know, 19:58 this sounds like a Job-type experience." 20:00 It was. 20:01 And because you look back and I'm like, "Okay, 20:03 I didn't deserve anything for this to happen. 20:06 You know, you're going, 20:07 "Okay, God, why did you let this thing happen?" 20:10 I literally had all these questions. 20:11 And in fact, the book of Job makes sense to me now, 20:14 those little questions and the things that were going. 20:15 I thought, "Wow." 20:17 I'm glad that you said that, 20:19 "Why did you let these things happen," 20:21 because, you know, oftentimes, when we run into tough times, 20:25 people blame God, 20:26 but He's not the one who caused it. 20:28 He allowed it to happen. 20:30 And you're asking why did He let it happen. 20:32 And the other thing came to play, 20:34 for the first time, I realized that there is an enemy 20:37 that prowls around like a roaring lion 20:41 and seeking those who would devour. 20:43 In this life, you will have trouble. 20:45 I never read any of those scriptures 20:47 because everything was charmed and wonderful. 20:49 Yeah. 20:50 I didn't understand that, you know, 20:52 because I was thinking, "God, I was doing all these things," 20:54 and I did a lot of things, 20:56 and I would go through that list, 20:57 and finally, I began to realize 21:00 God really wanted to change my heart for one thing 21:03 because I think my view up until that time was, 21:07 "Okay, God, I'm going to do this 21:09 and you bless it." 21:11 And it wasn't a conscious thing, 21:13 but I think we often do that. 21:16 And the whole point is "No, no, no. 21:18 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It works the other way around. 21:22 You know, I've given you these gifts, 21:25 I've given you these things, 21:27 and so I'm not along for the ride, you know, 21:31 I'm not in the back of the seat of this bus, 21:34 you know, or the plane, you forget. 21:36 I am the pilot." 21:38 And I think that was part of what I had to learn, 21:41 that's part of what had to learn. 21:43 Also, there's another thing took place. 21:45 I remember, just a year before that happened, 21:48 I remember a friend of mine 21:50 wound up getting involved in a relationship 21:53 and his marriage fell apart. 21:55 And I remember coming home. 21:57 He came and told me what happened, 21:59 how remorseful he was, 22:01 and I remember, I came home, 22:03 and I was so incensed, 22:05 and I remember looking at my wife 22:06 and said, "You know what, I'm glad I'm not like him. 22:11 I'm glad that, you know, how could he even, 22:15 how could those things happen?" 22:17 Well, here I was in a situation 22:18 that I didn't even do any of that. 22:21 But I found myself in the same situation 22:24 and God certainly teaching me through that. 22:27 The other hard part too was, 22:30 I remember going through this and two things happened. 22:34 Good friend of mine, pastor, 22:36 he was a pastor up at our church 22:38 encouraged me to actually leave the church. 22:40 And it sounds strange. 22:42 That really does. 22:43 Because of the rumor mill, 22:45 because it's like, 22:46 "There is no way that Tom's wife would have left 22:48 unless he was involved in an affair or something else," 22:51 and people in the church were saying this, 22:52 it was a very large church. 22:53 Wow. 22:55 And that was very hard for me. I was devastated by that. 22:59 Not by him saying that. 23:00 In fact, I wound up going to another one, 23:02 another pastor who said, 23:04 "Listen, I find we have a very a lot of broken people. 23:06 You can come on in. 23:07 We have a lot of people like you 23:09 that are divorced, and there are drug addicts 23:11 everything else, so come on in." 23:12 It was a great place actually, I went too. 23:14 It was different. That was hard. 23:15 The second thing was 23:18 I had been doing some business 23:21 and a young couple came in 23:23 and I remember they came in 23:26 and I was late getting work done. 23:28 I had literally stopped doing things. 23:30 I had lost all my equipment. 23:31 And I gave money back to them, and all kinds of other things, 23:34 and they prayed for me. 23:36 And it was in two weeks later, 23:38 they, along with several others, 23:40 filed lawsuits against me. 23:42 So I was being sued, 23:43 all these things were going, everything was going on. 23:46 That shook me 23:48 because I was just like, again, 23:52 "God, how could you let this happen?" 23:53 Yeah, and so are those the things, 23:55 is that what led up to you making the decision 23:59 to try and take your life? 24:00 Yeah. It got where... It's hard. 24:04 I could have never imagined thinking this way, 24:07 but I got to the point where the marriage was gone, 24:11 everything I owned was gone, my business, 24:14 my whole plan to retire in life was gone. 24:17 I didn't even think of it that way. 24:18 I look back on it now. 24:20 That was, you know, almost 20 years ago. 24:22 And then all these other things, 24:25 it was just... 24:26 I couldn't believe it. 24:28 And then you felt like everybody abandoned you. 24:29 It was just... 24:31 And then I'm living by myself, 24:33 and my kids would come over and they would stay. 24:35 And then the nights they were gone, 24:36 I just remember crying myself to sleep. 24:39 I got where I couldn't work. 24:40 I couldn't remember how to edit. 24:42 And I edit, and I shoot, and I do all kinds of things, 24:45 I couldn't remember what I was doing. 24:47 Yeah, it's like your world was just turned upside down. 24:50 Oh, yeah, turned upside down. Yeah. 24:52 So for the first time in my life, 24:54 I thought, "It would be better if I wasn't here." 24:57 And I started thinking about that, 24:59 and another thing, as I mentioned before, 25:02 and I don't know if it's part of a factor, 25:04 but I had been putting on some medicines 25:09 because people were encouraging me, 25:11 "Well, you're very creative. You need to be more cognitive." 25:13 And basically they were serotonin reuptake inhibitor. 25:18 And one of many that were out there, 25:19 and basically people use it for anti-depression 25:21 and the other things like that. 25:23 And it kind of changed the way I was doing things. 25:25 I just got where I was started being... 25:28 I had a clean desk, you know, "Who was organizing?" 25:30 That's not me, I'm more creative, 25:33 I'm out of the box. 25:34 So at what point... 25:36 Okay, so you ended up in that spot of desperation, 25:40 the point where you were going to end your life, 25:43 at what point did God grab a hold of you 25:46 and how did he intervene? 25:47 We only have a short amount of time left. 25:50 It's very simple. 25:52 One night after my kids were leaving, 25:55 I just remember being so desperate about it, 25:57 I remember kind of crying out to God 25:59 and then I just decided I was going to kill myself. 26:03 And I was trying to figure out ways to do it 26:05 because I had seen people do it. 26:07 And I was going through, "What would happen?" 26:10 And then I remember, I went back in the room 26:12 and I was just in tears, and I shut the bedroom door. 26:16 When I did that, all of a sudden, 26:17 there was a posted note, two of them, 26:19 up on the door, 26:21 and it's my kids. 26:22 They were young at the time. 26:24 One of them wrote, "Dad, I love you. 26:25 Miss you very much." 26:27 The other one was like, you know, 26:29 "I love you daddy. 26:31 You mean everything to me." 26:33 And that stopped me thinking, 26:36 but I was so serious about doing it. 26:38 And then other things happened a few weeks after that, 26:41 that just got so desperate, I decided, 26:43 and there were more things that even happened. 26:44 Yeah. Yeah. 26:46 I just decided I was going to stop it. 26:48 And so I was figuring out how to get a gun, 26:51 how to do this, that and the other, 26:54 and I remember, this was about eight or nine in the morning, 26:56 and all of sudden, the knock on the door 26:57 came on the door 26:59 and my dad was there, and he looked at me. 27:00 He said, "You're not trying 27:03 to hurt yourself or anything, are you?" 27:05 And I couldn't even admit it. 27:06 "No, I'm not, I'm not." 27:08 And it was just like divine intervention 27:09 very quickly. 27:11 That's how that was. 27:12 Wow. Wow. 27:14 So the God... 27:15 First, it was through the letters, 27:18 the posters from your children, 27:19 then your dad asking you, 27:21 realizing that something was wrong. 27:24 What advice in the short amount of time 27:26 that we have left would you give to that person 27:28 who is thinking about ending their life? 27:31 You know, one thing I would say is first of all, 27:33 don't let your faith be dictated by your circumstances, 27:37 they're temporal. 27:38 And you're valuable in God's eyes, 27:40 and you were someone worth dying for, 27:42 He died for you on the cross, and He gave His life for you. 27:45 And knowing that, 27:46 that made the difference in my life. 27:49 Amen. 27:50 Thank you so much for joining us, Tom, 27:53 and thank you for being so transparent 27:54 and sharing your testimony. 27:56 Well, we've reached the end of another program. 27:58 Thanks for tuning in. Join us next time. 28:00 And remember, 28:01 it just wouldn't be the same without you. |
Revised 2018-10-29