By DeVona Brown
Portsmouth, Va.
Friday, August 18, 2006 4:23 PM

I'd been taught to keep things from God. "Dear God, I hate my father for leaving, my mother for checking out and my sexual-predator youth adviser for existing" were all off-limits. It was bad enough to feel that way, but God was the last person I was supposed to tell. There was no, "God, this church service is taking too long" and definitely not, amid the wild days of college, "Lord, don't let me get pregnant after this."

Like many bred-from-the-cradle Christians, I toed the dishonest line, denying natural desires and ignoring normal emotions until, in dealing with God, I didn't have a choice. Still a Christian -- and more devout than I'd ever been -- I became severely suicidal, and my most sincere prayer was to die.

By April 2004, I'd written my obituary, cleaned my apartment for surviving relatives and methodically created what should've been lethal mixtures of tequila, hydrocodone, prescription ibuprofen and merlot (for dramatic purposes, I suppose). I even threw in PMS-relieving Midol because I figured extra doses of that couldn't hurt. Yet all God would allow my cocktails to do was make me really sick. Really desperate, I resorted to Old Testament-like bargaining with a letter written in an old notebook:

"Lord, I'm 26, relatively attractive, I think, definitely smart -- perhaps too smart for my own good, educated at one of the best schools nationwide, a member of what I consider the world's greatest professions, I have the world at my fingertips, and yet I'm ready to die. In one year, I've been forced out of my job and had my heart broken yet again. This is just too hard.

"Paul said to die is gain, that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And Peter said the suffering we face is nothing compared to the glory we'll see when we see Jesus. So why not let me die now?"

Amid my pleas, flowing ink replaced my tears, and although I still wanted to die, everything became still and quiet. In that calm, I was immune to myself. All I could do was to keep praying -- openly, angrily, irreverently and every way opposite of the way I was taught.

Before the months of therapy and antidepressants, it was my brutal honesty with God -- where I showed him who I really was -- that made Him show up to save my life all over again.