Deadly Dilemma: Suicide, Faith, and the Search for Identity and Purpose - Paperback

Gurley, Anthony: - Anthony Gurley is not famous. He is not a celebrity, athlete, politician, or business tycoon. His is not a household name. He is just an ordinary guy with a story to tell, one told under the umbrella of asking a bigger question about life relating to daily successes and victories, and failures and disappointments, both personal and professional. Anthony grew up in public housing in eastern North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s, the youngest of five children, six years younger than his closest sibling. His father walked out on him and the family at home just as he turned twelve. A stellar student and leader in high school, graduating in 1967, Anthony spent the next ten years earning a four-year degree at Guilford College, taking time away on two occasions working, getting married, and starting a family. He spent thirty years at his alma mater as the Director of Financial Aid, retiring in 2009 to launch Mo-T-Vation Ministry, providing scholarships and mentors to college-going Christian artists and athletes. Through the years, Anthony has battled the rigors of poor self-image and lack of self-esteem. His daddy's words to him as a child, "Get out of the way. I can't see through muddy water," and "Don't ask me for a damn thing," have haunted him in his struggle to value his own self-worth. Through it all, he has been blessed with his wife, Becky, for fifty-one years, two children, and three grandchildren. He also acknowledges awareness of a faith walk which has always been at the core of his journey, even when he was not in step with The One leading the way. In Deadly Dilemma, Anthony unsparingly opens wide the doors to his journey in the hope that others might find a path to confronting their struggles and their failures, and in the process, discover their life-saving answers to that bigger question. Are those moments of victory and success, happiness and joy, and peaks of cherishable memories sufficient in number, scope, magnitude, and frequency to outweigh the valleys