I had tried everything to fill the emptiness in my life - alcohol, drugs, relationships. I didn't want to live and I didn't want to die. My life was a complete and utter mess - until I met Jesus.

 My name is Sara Bryans and I am 27. I gave my life back to Jesus when I was 21. I was brought up in a Christian home, going to Sunday School each week, and asked Jesus into my life when I was very young. Despite this, I turned away from God when I was 15 and put my family through absolute hell which is something I really regret. I rebelled in school, and was always getting into trouble, even coming into school so drunk that I had to be sent home. I never knew what I wanted to do with my life. I never really had any ambition. (Now that I am a Christian, I now that my purpose in life is to work for Jesus, and that is what I want to do with all my heart.)

Jump to Sara - 4years on...  

Growing up for me was pretty hard, back in high school I was really depressed, I had absolutely no hope for the future, I wanted to kill myself almost everyday, I was into marijuana, and every now and then alcohol too. I had a little amount of friends, low self-esteem and no confidence, for every day in my life I was in despair, longing for something more, but never thinking that something more could exist. I have tried slitting my wrists several times, swallowing an overdose of pills, which led me to hospital and I had the doctor tell me if they didn't do something soon I would have died within two days, I was always just trying to find a way out of the dead dreariness of reality.

My story begins in Bega, a small town on the far south coast of New South Wales. I was fifteen, and had recently graduated year 10, when I slid into a depression. The stupid thing with me is that I denied it, and showed no sign of it to my parents or anyone else at the time. Many other problems from my past came back to haunt me, and I went to bed every night scared, scared of the present, the future, and life in general.

I was scared, because I was about to move to Canberra in January 2004, to do year 11 and 12, and I did not know how I was going to cope. My parents had been Salvation Army ministers when I was younger, until they divorced and went their separate ways in April 1997. I had claimed to be a Christian. I went to church, prayed and read the Bible occasionally. When it came down to the crunch, I was not a Christian; I did not have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Things got worse. I denied my situation further.