Inside Story: Part 3: Attempted Suicide

Inside Story for Friday 16th of May 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Diana’s husband grew angry when three women persisted in visiting the house to study their religious books. On their wedding day, he had told Diana, “Don’t ever try to get me to go to church.” Now he opposed the presence of the three women and threw out the books they gave her.

The women invited Diana to their church’s evening meetings. However, Diana worked nights at Pizza Hut to make ends meet. One woman pressured her into getting a day job at a newspaper so she could come to the meetings.

As Diana studied, she learned that the women believed Jesus was a created being and not eternal. Reading their literature, she saw that their Jesus didn’t match the Jesus whom she had learned about in the Bible as a girl.

Then Diana and her husband separated, and she moved with their three sons to Santa Fe, New Mexico. With no child support, friends, or family, she worked full-time to pay the bills and care for the boys, who were one, three, and five years old. Falling into an abusive relationship, she started thinking about suicide again. One day, after dropping her sons off at day care and school, she went to a gun shop and bought a gun. She knew how to use it from her Navy days.

Sitting on her couch at home, she loaded the gun’s chamber, pulled back the hammer, and pressed the gun against her chest. An all-too-familiar accusing voice rang in her head. “You’re a terrible person,” it said. “You’re a terrible mother.” Diana firmly gripped the trigger. She felt her heart pounding in her head. Then a calming voice interrupted her.

“What about your children?” it said.

Before she could respond, the accusing voice countered, “They will be better off without you.”

“They need you,” the calming voice pleaded.

Diana thought about how her death would affect her children. She became enraged. She had come up with a plan to end her pain, but now she couldn’t go through with it. “I can’t do this anymore! It’s too hard!” she cried out.

“You don’t have to,” the calming voice said. “I’ll do it for you.”

With those words, Diana put down the gun, collapsed onto the floor, and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she called a trusted coworker. Together, they drove into the desert to fire off the gun. Later, when Diana tried to return the gun, the gun-shop owner refused, saying, “It’s been used.”

“But you have to take it back,” Diana insisted, explaining that she had given a bad check. The owner reluctantly took back the gun and didn’t report her to the police. Diana believed that he sensed what had happened.

This mission story offers an inside look at how God miraculously worked in the life of Diana Fish, development director of the US-based Holbrook Seventh-day Adventist Indian School, which received the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in 2021. Thank you for supporting the spread of the gospel with this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on June 28. Read more about Diana next week.