Suicide teacher

By Hosea Ashcraft --

Now he's a teacher at Lighthouse Christian Academy, but when Zach Scribner was a student, he wanted to kill himself.

Life had become unbearable drudgery and football practice, agonizing torture.

“Every moment of every day of the week had been planned out for me, whether it was waking up in the morning, quick breakfast, make lunch, get to school, do my classes, right after school get changed, run to football practice, have football practice,” he remembers.

“I wasn't even starting (on the team), and they were using me as a blocking dummy, go home, shower, eat dinner, do my homework, go to bed, repeat, and then Saturdays, wake up, go football games, go home, do the extra homework, Sunday morning church, afternoon homework, night church -- and Monday all over again.”

His football coach was one of those coaches who emerge from a dungeon with a black cowl. Practice was akin to training Medieval knights to make a last stand against the innumerable hordes of Moores sweeping northward from Africa. There was no mercy, no rest, no humaneness.

On every single down, his opponent, a brawny senior, on the line had to dump Zach on his butt -- or he would be given hundreds of pushups. Zach was a freshman.

“I was getting pounded,” Zach remembers. “After six weeks of this, it was wearing on me, and I was beat and sick and tired of it. It felt like this was just my life, this was how my life was.”

It sucked.

In the tedium, the numbing and the intolerable, his mind wandered in a haze of confusion, and he toyed with finding an escape from the unrelenting schedule.

Suicide became something of a fantasy. It flashed in his mind more than once.

He wasn’t technically suicidal. He didn’t need professional help. He didn’t cross any lines. He was just flirting with an idea in his mind. Maybe it was a coping mechanism.

Zach didn’t tell his parents -- or anyone -- about the contemplation until years later.

If people looked at his life, they would have thought he had everything. He was getting good grades. His team went on to be runner ups in CIF Southern Section 8-man football. He was a “good” kid in school, in church and at home.

Nobody would have guessed that behind the facade, frighteningly dark thoughts lurked.

What ultimately helped Zach was he heard his dad share about his own struggles with suicide.

“My dad was playing football for the Rams, and he had some problems in his relationship with my mom and she had separated from him,” Zach tells. “My dad was laying in bed one morning feeling like he had messed up so bad that his life wasn't really worth living.”

“So he decided to commit suicide.”

As he lay there, Rob Scribner -- who is now the senior pastor of Lighthouse Church and Santa Monica and who oversees the LCA -- formulated a quick plan to carry it out. But “he felt like his hands were shackled to the bed,” Zach says.

“Are you sure you want to kill yourself?” a voice in his head questioned Rob.

“Yes,” he replied, resolute.

“Ok go ahead.”

Rob tried to get up. Again, his hands seemed shackled to the bed.

A third time the voice said, “Do you want to commit suicide?”

“Yes,” he replied unwaveringly.

“OK, then give Me your life,” it said.

Rob understood the voice to belong to God. And he hearkened to that voice. He gave his life to God and no longer “lived it for himself.” Rob Scribner began to project more and more the image of the Godly man on the gridiron. After retiring from the NFL, he spoke at churches. Then he was ordained a pastor.

He overcame the difficulties with his wife and went on to have eight kids. Zach was the third to last.

“I always saw my dad as untouchable,” Zach says. “He never showed that he was struggling. To see him struggle with similar problems as me, I saw the way he got through.”

Zach still bears up under a lot of pressure. He teaches at LCA and manages a lot of other jobs, such as janitorial and ubering to make ends meet for his wife and two kids. He functions as youth pastor at the Lighthouse Church. He’s found peace in his faith.

And he can relate to kids. I should know. I am one of those kids who’s found meaning in life and emotional stability in part because Pastor Zach has been there for me.

Hosea Ashcraft is a student and son of LCA's journalism teacher, Mike Ashcraft. The section describing Zach's football coach is hyperbole. He's a great guy and was a demanding coach.