I’ve always been a performer. Even from a young age, I desired the spotlight. Whether it be dance recitals, musicals, the choir at my church, or public speaking for school - if there was a stage, I was on it. My parents would often say to people, “the world is Eve’s stage.” I loved knowing that. I loved knowing my parents were proud of me and that I had the ability to impress others. I longed to hear a “job well done.” 

I grew up in a small town in Northwest Pennsylvania in a home filled with love and peace. My parents loved the Lord and each other, and they worked hard to make our home a safe place for people from all walks of life. When I was fifteen years old, I started leading worship at the church my parents pastored. While I was fully in love with Jesus, there was also a piece of me that longed to receive the praise of man on Sunday mornings.

“Despite what I was projecting, I was deeply struggling internally.”

At seventeen years old, I began my struggle with depression and anxiety. I wanted to do everything in my power to keep that part of myself completely hidden. After I graduated high school, I attended a small Bible college in upstate New York. It was my first time being away from home, and I wanted the people around me to perceive me without flaws or imperfections. For the first two years in New York, I kept my inner struggles completely to myself. I won people over, impressed them, showed them the best of me, and concealed the hurt. Despite what I was projecting, I was deeply struggling internally. It was exhausting battling my own mind while trying to keep up the facade of perfection for the public eye. I was buckling under the weight of isolation and loneliness, and I lived in fear that I wouldn’t be able to sustain the false persona that I was trying to keep up. I was terrified that people would see me for who I really was - a broken human longing for freedom from her own mind. 

The summer before my junior year, I started to burn out completely. My family and friends started to notice something had changed in me. There was a spark that was missing. The things I often found joy and pleasure in became mundane tasks and responsibilities that I could hardly get through. I stopped wanting to hang out with people. I started struggling academically and missing my classes constantly. I chalked it up to being so busy all the time, but truthfully, my depression was intensifying. 

As I started my junior year of college, taking care of myself became nearly impossible. I felt like I was constantly letting people down and disappointing them, but I was too prideful to let the ones I loved into my struggle as I had a reputation to keep up with. If I let people in, I would lose my ability to perform for them. An identity crisis began to set in and I was barely hanging on.

Within the thick of the anxiety and depression that I was facing, I had a lapse of judgment on something and I made a mistake. One that was harmless, but significant enough to grab the attention of my leaders at the time. I remember sitting across from three of my leaders as they told me how disappointed they were and how they thought I was better than the mistake I’d made. The walls around me seemed to creep in closer and closer together. I had failed them and I had failed myself by revealing my imperfections. It was my worst nightmare.

After that experience, I made a pact with myself never to let another leader or loved one see into the deeper parts of me. If they saw how I was really doing, they wouldn’t love or trust me anymore. Better safe than sorry. I took a turn for the worse, and suicidal thoughts became part of my daily routine. If my “true self” would only reveal disappointment, why breathe another breath? My inner thoughts were threatening my life, and I was drowning. I continued on in my double life of lies despite my painful reality. 

A year and a half later, I graduated college and I made the decision to move out to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in hopes to leave behind the heartache and trauma that had found me while I was in college. I enrolled in Radiant School of Worship with the desire to launch into full-time worship ministry afterward. I felt like this school would be a fresh start. I met so many new people, leaders, teachers, and friends within the first few weeks of living in Kalamazoo. I remember calling my parents and telling them how noticeably healthy the environment around me was - something I had not experienced for many years. However, the performance mentality within me started to rise once again, and I began putting up the same old walls with my new leaders and new friends. I would present the best version of myself, so much so that I didn’t even recognize the girl that these leaders were getting to know. She was a polished, practiced lie that I was good at maintaining, but I didn’t know her, and she wasn’t me.

In January of 2023, the Lord met me in my loneliness. I was sitting in church with my depressive thoughts and anxious tendencies that had made a raging comeback over the past few weeks. After the service ended, I lingered in the sanctuary. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to stay, so I did. Moments later, two leaders that I loved and trusted sat just a few rows in front of me. Again, I felt the Holy Spirit, and He gently asked me to go and talk with them. However, I couldn’t think of what words I would even say to them. Regardless, I stood up and walked over to where they were. As soon as I sat down, tears started to flow, and things that I thought I wouldn’t know how to articulate came rushing from my heart. I confessed that I had been presenting a version of myself that I couldn’t maintain anymore. I told them that I had been afraid that if they saw my inner mess, they would be disappointed, and it would limit their love for me and warp their view of me. To my surprise, these leaders that I loved so much looked at me and told me that they cared for me no matter what I did. There was nothing that I needed to do to win their approval. In that moment, the Holy Spirit revealed to me that my fears went deeper than just what man thought of me. I had been even more afraid that God would be disappointed in me should I fail or fall short. The enemy had sewn a lie within me that made me believe I had to hide to be perfect in order to maintain God’s love for me.

In the days following that encounter, we experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and day in and day out, the Lord healed and restored the way I saw Him as my Father, my Shepherd, my Leader, and Friend. He showed me things that I could have never discovered had I been left to my own devices. I began to understand that the depression I had been facing for all those years was really me not being able to carry the weight of my performance and fear of rejection. I can’t say there was a moment where I was instantly set free and everything locked into place, but I did begin to understand that I had a choice. I began to see that the Father was proud of me without conditions. There is a liberty that comes with that understanding! A liberty to choose to live as a daughter who has a proud Father. A freedom to decide to abandon the chains of old and step into the abundant life He has gifted me with. There are still days that I catch myself in the old way of believing lies and submitting to fear, but every time I am greeted with the proud, loving, and open arms of the Father. I have to ask the Lord every day to help me walk the narrow path that leads to life - His life! It can be difficult to choose to believe the truth, but the reward is well worth it when I do. He is the joy set before me, the pearl of greatest price in whom my soul delights! I can stand in confidence that at the end of my life, I will hear the words from my King, “well done good and faithful servant,” and that is better than any “job well done” here on earth!

Do you feel your story can serve as a hope and inspiration to others? Share your story at mystory@radiant.church.