Following an unhappy childhood, where my parents separated when I was four, divorcing sometime later, I was diagnosed with major depression as a young adult in 1986. Actually while in a depression, the following summer I met and gave my heart to Christ. Some years later, in 1992, I felt called to study at what was then Ontario Bible College and earned a BRE, then went on to complete an M.Div. in Counseling at Tyndale Seminary. Two years following that, in September of 2000, I developed delusions (ever see the movie A Beautiful Mind?) and was in that state (was psychotic) for almost a full year.

While ill, I went some 60 times to the emerg to try to get help, including calling 911 on myself numerous times. In the second week of May, 2001, I went to three different hospitals and blatantly stated my fear that I would try to take my life with a jump; instead of being hospitalized, twice I was sent to a psychiatric crisis centre that was, in fact, walking distance from the very bridge from which I threatened to jump.

On the second occasion of going to the centre, I stayed for two days and left on foot for the Bloor Street Viaduct; at the time, it was the second most popular suicide magnet in all of North America, second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. As a result of this, the city of Toronto erected a suicide barrier around the Viaduct called, “The Luminous Veil” at a cost of 5.5 million dollars in 2003.

Thinking in my mixed-up mind that it was God’s will to do it, and thinking of nothing but Jesus at the time, I plunged over 100 feet into the Rosedale Valley. As a result, I incurred a spinal cord injury. Two months later, I fired my psychiatrist at the time, and got a new one who diagnosed the delusions and finally, put me on the right medication which I remain on today.

Three and a half years post-injury, a friend referred to me as “Ellen of Joy”. In addition, I was able to help around 40 people come to faith in Christ three years after that, and I can confidently say that, God has taught me to embrace life more fully from the wheelchair as a paraplegic than I ever did when I was able-bodied (Romans 8:28). He gave me even more reasons to “in everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), a plaque of which I have/had prior to my injury on my living room wall.