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["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

What happened to your face? Scars tell of a will to live 

Oct. 1, 2004	 News media contact:   Matt  Carlisle * (615) 742-5470* 
Nashville {04450}

NOTE: This story is the first of a three-part series by UMC.org and United
Methodist News Service. Photographs and additional information can be found
at www.umc.org.

A UMC.org Feature
By Susan Passi-Klaus*

When Eric Renegar was 18 years old, he put a .30-caliber deer rifle under his
chin and pulled the trigger. For hours on that cold November night, he lay on
the ground beside his father's gravestone, trying to die.

"I didn't try to kill myself because I really wanted to die, as much as I
just did not want to go on living the way I was living," confesses Renegar,
now 32. "I couldn't see that there was going to be a solution to the problems
in my life." 

Now Renegar is using his life to show other people how to live. His program,
AboutFace Assemblies, not only sponsors suicide prevention presentations for
schools, it also offers staff development training in suicide crisis
intervention and awareness.

"Only time can really show how your tragedies can be used for triumph and how
your tragedies can help others," he says. "It's my hope that people will
learn from my mistakes and my openness. Maybe then there will be a reason I
went through everything that I did." 

Renegar is blunt about the self-destructive means that for him led to an
altruistic end. Whenever he speaks to a group, he wears a black T-shirt that
gets straight to the point, "What happened to your face?" 

"I wanted people specifically to know that I was OK with my scars," says
Renegar, whose chin and lips are disfigured. "Because my scars are an
invitation for others to accept help.

"I want people to look at my face. I want them to know that there are others
out there that struggle with depression," he says. "There are others out
there that struggle with humiliation. There are others out there that
struggle with hopelessness. There are other people, like me, who know what
they're going through."

The question that almost always follows "What happened to your face?" is,
"Why?"

"I can give you lots of reasons, but really they're just excuses," Renegar
answers. His father's death from emphysema, his mother's remarriage, and his
use of drugs and alcohol left him feeling angry, abandoned and overwhelmed as
a teen in Ozark, Mo. Though he could answer truthfully with "my problems just
got to be too much for me to deal with," what he is more likely to answer
with is, "because I have an illness."

"I believe suicide is a direct result of unsuccessfully treated depression,"
he explains. "When somebody dies by cancer, cancer is not what takes his or
her life. What takes their life is fluid filling the lungs, the internal
organs shutting down, maybe there's a massive hemorrhage in the brain. But
the illness associated with that death is cancer. 

"When somebody dies by suicide, suicide is just the way in which they died.
It's the means in which they lost their life to an illness, an illness called
depression."

Renegar, who now lives with his wife and son in Carthage, Tenn., has since
learned that a symptom of depression is the inability to solve problems
sanely.

"A depressed person can't process stress in a healthy way," he says. "Because
they're overwhelmed and don't have the ability to see beyond their immediate
problems, they feel hopeless. Suicide looks to be the only way out - the only
way to stop the pain."

Someone who understands is Kenny Graves, a retired educator from Hohenwald,
Tenn., and a member of Hohenwald First United Methodist Church. 

"I've been there," Graves says. Three years ago, the 67-year-old was in the
audience the night Renegar delivered a speech on how drugs and alcohol
exacerbate suicidal thinking. The two have been close friends ever since.

"I've had some things happen in my life that I caused, and as a result I
suffered severe depression," Graves says. "I haven't admitted this to anybody
until now, but I did have suicidal thoughts." 

What stopped him from taking his own life?

"God stopped me," Graves says. "Being able to talk to Eric and with some
friends, being able to talk to my pastor, just being able to talk about how
bad I was hurting helped me. But what helped me probably more than anything
else, besides Eric listening to me, was going down to the altar and getting
on my knees and praying to God to help me.

"I still hurt," he says, smiling. "But I'm getting better."

Whether it's a 16-year-old high school student struggling to get along with
parents or a senior adult wrestling with aging, both are apt to see the same
thing when they look at Renegar's disfigured face: hope.

"There was a time I prayed that my scars would disappear," Renegar says. "If
I had it to do over, I would never have shot myself. But after I started
sharing my experience with others, my prayers changed. I didn't want my scars
to fade anymore because they'd actually become a blessing.

"It was a turning point in my life when I saw that people wouldn't reject
me," he says. "I always thought that everyone would think I was crazy or
wouldn't want to have anything to do with me because I had taken a gun and
tried to kill myself. But you know what I learned? People don't necessarily
care about your successes in life. They don't care about how great your life
is, or how perfect you are or how well everything is going for you. 

"You know what people really care about? They want to know, how are you like
me? How can you understand what I'm going through? And how can you help me? 

"Everybody suffers, but not everybody has scars to show it," he says. "I'm
one of the lucky ones."

*Passi-Klaus is a freelance writer living in Nashville, Tenn., and publisher
of Cracked Pots, an inspirational newsletter for women. UMC.org, administered
by United Methodist Communications, is the official Web site of the United
Methodist Church.

News media contact: Matt Carlisle, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5153 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service