Personal Narrative-Assisted Suicide

Some years ago, one of the elders at our church was heading home from work and as he crossed through an intersection, another car jumped the intersection and went straight into the side of his car. How many of you have ever been in a car accident? This next part is going to make sense to you because he was sitting trapped in the vehicle and while he waited for the fire department to come and cut him out of the car, he could smell the fuel. When he smelled the fuel, because there is a place called Hollywood in California, you think your car is going to explode. So, by the time the fire department got there, Jay was freaking out. "Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Get me out of here," he was yelling. As they were cutting on the driver's …show more content…
So two days later I saw my friend Melanie Chung-Sherman and I told Melanie the story and she hit me. She’s a therapist, I don't think you are allowed to hit people in therapy sessions, but if you're just talking to them, they can. She said, "Of course that's your problem, Ryan. Because your body has this narrative that it believes, 'bad things happen to Ryan on airplanes' and you're just waiting for the bad thing to happen. That's why you're so tense." A month later, we flew to CAFO up in Nashville and we were on Southwest airlines and as we get on the plane there are two seats that I can see as we're walking down the aisle that are open on the window and the middle seat and as the crowd parts, Melanie is sitting on the aisle on that row. So my next plane ride I got to take with my therapist, few of you have that privilege, I did and so we kinda talked through some stuff. Now I am happy to report that I've probably flown twenty times since then, I can now actually make it onto the plane. The essential oils don't travel with me anymore. I can actually take off without listening to music now. Flying through turbulence doesn't bother me because I was made aware of something and I dealt with it. Now, that was a fun story, here's why it matters. My six children are in Orlando this week because we are going to go visit Disney World this weekend. My seven-year-old daughter is a very high anxiety child and she sat next to me on the plane because she is also the Daddiest of all Daddy's girls in the world. So, we had decided as we assigned seats that she'd sit next to Dad. We got her onto the plane and she was really excited about going to Disney, she'd never

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