When life let her down, she struggled to live on but God’s love pursued her relentlessly

In her 20s, Shantini Sathiyanesan was riding the crest of a wave of success.

In university, she did so well that she earned a fully paid spot on an overseas exchange programme to Germany. Because of her stellar academic results, she also won full sponsorship for the four years of her education. 

After graduating with a degree in Education, she became a teacher. At work, she won awards, was quickly promoted and had a team to manage. It looked like she was on the fast track to a senior leadership position.  

Shantini receiving her certificate after graduating with a degree in Education.

She did well enough to buy herself a condominium. Her social life was vibrant, she travelled often and was in a seven-year relationship that was headed towards the altar.

Shantini travelled often in her 20s.

“All these made me see myself in a mighty light,” said Shantini, now 38.

“I really felt I was standing on the mountain top of success because I had checked all the boxes society associated with success.”

But before she turned 30, Shantini would encounter setback after setback until, crushed under the weight of deep pain, she tried to take her own life – twice.

And it all came tumbling down

It started in May 2015 when Shantini’s maternal grandmother passed away suddenly after a brief illness. Although her grandmother was 80, she had been healthy up until then.

“In my early years, she took care of me. She was someone I spent a lot of weekends with, an important figure in my life.

“Her passing left such a deep impact on me. It shattered my sense of safety and permanence. I found it difficult to articulate the absence, the longing, the milestones she would not get to witness, the memories she would not create,” she told Salt&Light.

It was Shantini’s first brush with loss of this magnitude and she did not know how to process it. So she threw herself into work. But before the year ended, she suffered yet another major loss – her engagement was called off.

“We saw it coming but I thought maybe it might be delayed, not called off. It was really hard. We had been together a long time. What do I do with everything of this person I had spent time with? 

“There was a lot of shame because everyone knew I was going to get married. And there was confusion because even though I knew (ending) it was going to be better, it was still hard.”

The fallout was not just personal. Its effects rippled across both families and extended families.

As 2016 rolled along, things worsened. By the middle of the year, there was conflict in the workplace and in Shantini’s extended family.

“Although I wasn’t involved, I saw it happening and it was a blow to what I believed in.

“It left me broken-hearted and looking for peace. Starting from there, there was emptiness, burden, feeling lonely. I was questioning life, death, humanity and my worth.”

Pursued by love

Shantini grew up in a household where religion was part of daily life. Prayers at home altars and temple visits were the norm. Because she fulfilled all her religious obligations and believed she was “a good person with no big sins”, she thought that would “earn me blessings”.

So when life went off script, Shantini was deeply disappointed.

“I didn’t really want to talk about God because how come this happened? I think I was upset and angry.”

Yet the God of love “pursued me through His people”, she told Salt&Light.

Christian friends at her workplace who knew of what she had gone through prayed for her. When there was a change of workstations, she ended up sitting diagonally across from a Christian friend who supported her and shared the faith with her. The school at which she taught was a mission school and there were devotions every day.

“God had a plan. During my darkest times, God used these to reveal Himself to me.”

Shantini’s work station with all the gifts and encouragements from friends and colleagues.

But Shantini was, by her own admission, “hard-hearted and resistant”. When her friend invited her to an Alpha course, she threw the invitation, which was printed on a tissue pack, into the bin. The second time she was invited, she attended the welcome session and never returned.

Her friend, the one who sat diagonally across from her at work, never gave up. She introduced Shantini to Christian worship songs.

“She noticed that every time I had nothing to do, I would sit at my desk listening to sad love songs. So she said, ‘Shan, this is not healthy for you. Let me give you something else to listen to.’”

Slowly, Shantini’s hardened heart softened enough for her to accept her third invitation to Alpha. This time, she completed the course. Her Christians friends had persisted and prayed for her for three years. 

At the end of Alpha, while Shantini did not pray to receive Jesus into her life, she began looking up Bible verses and talking to her friends about God.

“Something in Alpha that I was comforted by was the concept of the reality of sin. (I realised) I was also a sinner,” she shared.

“That was something so new to me. I was no better than someone else. It made me understand the brokenness of the world and the sacrificial love of God.”

Shantini (centre, in blue) with the people from the cell group who attended the Alpha course with her.

For someone who had always thought salvation had to be earned, this was liberating.

In June 2017, while on a solo trip to Australia, Shantini felt such an “unexplainable intense desire” to visit a church. When she entered the place, the song In Christ Alone was being sung. It was the very worship song that had been stirring in her heart. The sermon, titled “Giants in your life, Goliath must fall”, also spoke to her.

“It felt like God knew exactly where I was and what I needed. It spoke directly to my struggles and it felt like the message was meant for me.”

During the altar call, all alone in a foreign country, Shantini raised her hand and accepted Christ into her life.

More crises to come

Shantini would return to Singapore to yet another crisis in her life. A few months after becoming a Christian, she found herself a victim of cyberbullying. The torment would last nearly two years.

She was still a young Christian who had yet to tell her family she had converted to another religion, nor had fully recovered from past hurts.

“I was trying to navigate my faith, but the reality of living it amidst the ongoing trauma was far more complex than I imagined.

“The pain, fears and challenges were constant and overwhelming me faster than I could understand the truth. I found myself in a dark place, barely keeping my head above the water.”

She had also harboured hopes that, having become a Christian, things would get better. Instead, she was faced with injustice and a prolonged period of trauma.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t love Jesus, but I was struggling to reconcile my faith with my reality. I blamed myself for struggling.”

The chronic stress took a toll on Shantini’s health. In 2018, she found herself in and out of the hospital for gastro issues. She lost weight, became irritable and angry, and cried easily. Then came the depression. Suicide ideations followed. By mid-2018, she stopped teaching.

“Let me die”

What should have been a time of rest became a period of feeling abandoned.

“I felt God had forgotten me. Life was doomed.”

Bowed under the weight of despair, she drank to cope. That led to more feelings of shame and then to her first suicide attempt.

“It was not because I truly wanted to die,” she told Salt&Light. I felt completely lost, demoralised and overwhelmed by the pain. It was a desperate longing for relief from anguish and hopelessness.

“As a Christian, I wondered if I was being punished, questioning if my suffering was because I lacked faith or I had failed people and God

“I told God, ‘Please take my life. Let me die.’ It was a dark night and no one was at the place.”

Instead, God protected her and kept her alive. Upon the encouragement of colleagues and her mentor at work, Shantini decided to get professional help. She found herself a psychiatrist and a counsellor who worked together to put her on a regimen of medication and therapy.

“The journey was so difficult and the medication was filled with side effects. I felt like such a disappointment, I was contemplating ending my life again.”

This time, God sent a stranger who simply stopped and asked if Shantini was all right, and then smiled at her.

“That was so small, but it disrupted my thoughts and kept me alive,” she reflected.

“I saw God’s care and protection. He had control over my life. I was truly not alone. Even in my suffering, His presence remained.”

Coming out of the darkness

Eventually, Shantini managed to settle on medication that worked for her. Counselling also provided a safe space to talk things out and develop better coping skills.

“I learnt to hold on till the next sunrise, the next sunset, just day by day. I learnt to pay attention to even the smallest thing like the warmth of the sunlight, like my breath.”

Shantini’s counsellor also linked her parents resources that helped them make sense of their own grief and confusion as caregivers. This strengthened the support she had at home.

She also had the support of Christian friends who “kept showing up”.

“God really knew I needed people. There were so many and they were His hands and feet.

“They showed me kindness and presence, gave me meaningful gifts, visited me at the hospital, brought me meals, listened to me cry, prayed with me. All these were reminders of God.”

The friends who stod by Shantini in her season of darkness.

Clinging to her faith helped as well. Shantini would carry Christian booklets that dealt with issues like anxiety and sorrow, and would leaf through them for encouragement. Friends gave her cards with Bible verses that she kept in her wallet to remind her of God’s promises.

She even attended services in several churches apart from her home church because she “wanted to be in the Word and worship”.

The biggest breakthrough came in late 2018 when she was invited by a friend to go to Israel.

“To walk and see those places Jesus had been and to know that even God had gone through so much hardship. He knows suffering, He knows pain.

“That was so comforting to know. He goes before us. We are not alone. Even if everyone else doesn’t understand, He does,” Shantini told Salt&Light.

Shantini (standing in blue) on the Israel trip that was the breakthrough she needed.

Shantini returned to connect with God and to rest. Today, she is married and works as a counsellor with Samaritans of Singapore (SOS), her lived experience giving her a deeper understanding of the struggles of those with whom she journeys.

Shantini graduating with a Master of Counselling from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

In 2023, Shantini was part of an SOS event promoting suicide prevention.

Shantini served on the working committee for Christian Mental Health Conference 2025. She also had the opportunity to support a workshop for Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) and participated as a panellist in the fireside chat on “Uncomfortable Conversations”.

“It’s been eight years since I became a Christian. My life isn’t perfect. My flaws are still visible. I still wrestle with sin, still feel pain, heartaches or struggles.

In 2019, Shantini (centre) was interning at Woodlands Evangelical Free Church and she had the opportunity to share her testimony in the presence of her family.

“But time and again God shows me His grace, His love comforts me. I clearly see how He worked difficult circumstances for good. That is something I hold on to.”

The post When life let her down, she struggled to live on but God’s love pursued her relentlessly appeared first on Salt&Light.