Letter to the Editor: Your Editorial on suicide (We need to be more open about suicide, Cambrian News, 12 April 12 April) prompts me to comment on a very controversial subject, the value of a religious faith in a troubled world.

You report that young men are particularly inclined to take their lives, and it is not surprising that they despair of ever buying their own home, especially when homeless as described by Chris Betteley (Behind The News: No home, ho help, no hope, Cambrian News, 12 April).

I have had great adventure living in seven houses, and having seven children, and I am angry that young people are denied the excitement of their own home, or the reassurance of a secure tenancy, whilst our government denies the NHS an adequate wage, quoting the fear of inflation, when they deliberately fuelled property inflation to tickle the tummies of their electoral constituency, and their own property portfolios.

I lost our last house in bankruptcy, and now live in a room, and during the bankruptcy I did not thank the nurse that in a previous health check had said, “You have the heart of a teenager Mr Louvet”. I simply wanted to die, and when I came to Wales I would imagine myself face down or up in a ditch that I often passed.I often marvel that so many people believe that the world, and ourselves, are the result of random chance.

I don’t have sufficient faith to believe that, and will settle for an intelligent, planned creation, a belief I have held for many years. However, like many people I had a crisis in my faith many years ago, about the conflict between patriotism and the causes of war, which caused me to cease going to church.

The bankruptcy forced me to return to church to quell my relentless suicidal thoughts, and my instincts were proven correct, for at first slowly, but then faster, I accepted that our trials on earth are but a probation for our eternal life in heaven. How we respond to those trials is more important than the trials.

C S Lewis said that ‘many think that Heaven cannot compensate for earthly disappointments, not realising that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards, and make that mortal agony seem like a glory’.

Roger Louvet, Porthmadog

Editor’s note: A very moving letter — and life isn’t about how many times you fall but how you pick yourself up.