Growing up, I was always known as the “perfect Christian girl” in school and with all my friends. They saw me go to church sometimes, go to bible camp in the summer, and occasionally talk about Jesus. It was very easy to hide behind this view of myself. I thought that as long as people saw me as a “good Christian” from the outside, that was good enough until I got older to have a reason to care about my personal relationship with God. As I grew up, I went to church less but I would tell people that I felt so close to God because it felt like that was the only response that a “true Christian” would give. I would come back from camp every summer and be ready to tell people about what I learned, then get discouraged the second someone didn’t seem excited to listen. Although there were some seasons that I would be semi-consistent in reading my Bible and praying, most of the time it was more of a performance to look good.

The summer after my junior year of high school I decided to work at the camp I attended growing up. At the beginning of the summer, I loved all the physical activities but I never looked forward to leading a bible study. Instead of feeling excited when another counselor’s camper made a step in their faith, I felt bitter that my campers weren’t taking those steps. As the summer went on, we had time to open up as a staff and I was ready to talk about sins I had overcome, but the thought of sharing struggles that I was currently going through terrified me. A fear of judgment controlled me and I felt the need to hide my sins and take care of them myself. About halfway through the summer, I decided to open up to the other girls on staff and it felt like a physical weight was lifted off my shoulders. Although part of me still wanted to be seen as the “perfect Christian girl,” I knew that it was more important to let those girls into what I was struggling with to get through it. By the end of the summer I was feeling pretty good about where I was at with my relationship with God and along with that, I noticed the freedom I felt from sharing what I was going through with other girls.

When I went back to school my senior year, I knew it was going to be a struggle, since I didn’t have any Christian friends back at school and all the people I worked with during the summer were in college. For the first few months of school, I distanced myself from God more than I wanted to, since so much of my schedule was taken up with sports, school and music. In December, I decided that my faith needed to be more of a priority. This led to me starting to go to youth group and attend church regularly for the first time in years. I felt a lot of anxiety about joining this group so late, since most kids who were in it had been there since middle school. But the second I met my small group leader and the girls in my small group, I knew that it was going to be a space where I felt safe to share what I was going through. I went pretty consistently throughout the rest of my senior year and also went to church consistently through my senior year. This was the first time I felt like I had a community who wouldn’t judge me or hold anything against me in my life. I didn’t have to walk on eggshells or put on the image of the “perfect Christian” with them.

When I decided to come to UW Madison, I knew that I wanted to continue to have a solid Christian community. I heard about a campus ministry when I was in high school because my sister was in it when she went here. Then, when I went back to work at the summer camp, there were two other staff members who were a part of the same campus ministry as my sister and they helped me get connected right away. Although I had a solid community of believers here, there was still part of me who was seen as the “perfect Christian” by my roommates and some of the other people I was friends with.. I was willing to let them think that because it was easier than telling them about all the sins I struggled with. Over the past year, this is something that I still occasionally struggle with, but God has worked through me to open up with people who are close to me, which is something I could not have imagined doing a few years ago.