By Ben Henker

As a preacher’s kid it was a common occurrence that I would be picked first for Bible trivia, that I would be asked about the trip that we were going on, or to be asked if we had church that night or not.  But in my house, we were a family that never really spent much time reading the Bible or praying as a family. I knew growing up that I was going to church because I was a Christian, but let’s be real, I was going to church because my dad worked there and that’s what came with the gig. 

To be honest, I never fully understood who God was or what he was doing in my life until I went to a retreat in the Twin Cities when I was in 7th grade (year 2012). It wasn’t until that retreat that I fully understood who Christ was and gave my life to serving him.  It was something that I wanted more and craved for more. After that day I looked at my life differently. I wanted to treat others as myself. I wanted to forgive those who have done wrong to me while also living out a life of loving others.  I began striving to live life as God tells us to live in the everyday, honoring my neighbor as myself (Matthew 19:19). 

Though my heart came alive to God’s love for me, high school was a time in my life where I felt pretty lonely.  I contemplated suicide two or three times because I struggled to really fit in and find a place to belong.  It seemed as though we had four different social groups in our class, and I never really fit in with any of them – I didn’t feel sporty enough, popular enough, or even rebellious enough for these groups.    

I was never able to find a true friend in my life.  It was a common occurrence that my parents would tell me to invite classmates over for a bonfire or a movie, never knowing that “my friends” were actually at someone else’s place or at the movies already without me.  It always bothered me to no end, knowing that they were “my friends” in school but out of school, I was never thought about to hang around with.  I longed for connection, real flesh-and-blood connection.  But, even though friends were far and few between and even though I was profoundly lonely, I still had this sense where I knew God had a plan in store for my life and that he was going to use me. Sometimes, as Scripture encourages us, we have to ‘wait upon the Lord.’   

When it finally came time to choose a college, I was desperate for a fresh start!  And now since coming to Northwestern, I’ve been so refreshed by the community here – academically, socially, and spiritually. I’ve learned that I’m not the only person that’s struggling, and that it’s okay to struggle alongside each other.  Most of all, I’ve learned that the guys at North Suites have become like family. Beyond a family, it’s a brotherhood. It’s a brotherhood that’s a bit weird at times, but it’s so cool to see fortnight players, athletes, book-worms, etc. all come together as one and talk about life.  It’s here at Northwestern with the guys in North Suites where I found the belonging I yearned for and for the friendships that won’t end after leaving OC; and because of the truthfulness and the love of North Suits and of Northwestern, it’s here where I found my true identity that Christ has instore for me.

By Liz Ellis

Let’s talk about mental illness: specifically, depression. Having depression sucks; it can literally make one’s life a living hell from the comfort of their own dorm room. It can haunt someone on the way to class and force them to just put in their headphones and look at the cracks lining the sidewalk. Depression can turn the most beautiful fall days or the most blissful snowfall nights into a gloomy fog.  

My story with depression is twofold.  

The first part is my story. Between the ages of 13-16 my struggle with depression was a secret. I hid it by being loud and “fun”.  I took charge in every situation and always looking for something else to distract me. I never realized that the thing that would fill the hole in my life was a relationship with God.   

I was diagnosed when I was 16 by a therapist after my parents found out I was depressed. They found out after the police showed up at my house because of a tip that I was going to kill myself and was causing myself harm. I remember feeling so isolated but so publicized that I was hurting. The isolation I felt during this time caused me to slip further into my depression. I longed to be understood. Not only was I haunted by this darkness, I felt like it was the defining factor of my life and who I was as a person. I felt like depression had become my identity, not to mention that this affected the way I made relationships with others and the way I looked at myself – both physically and mentally.  

When I was 18, I started taking medication for my depression as well as anxiety. At first it was really hard to manage the “blocking out” of feelings I had when on the meds.  I still wanted to feel emotions, but some days I would feel emotionally numb for hours and other days I would feel everything at once, like an overwhelming tidal wave. But thankfully, it got better soon.  I adjusted to being a “normal” person again. I still have bad days, but mostly it feels like a voice in the back of my head that I can block out. I developed tools for fighting my depression such as poetry, both written and spoken, and studying Scripture, which leads into the second part of my story.    

I am not alone. For most of my adolescence I felt as if I was the lone soldier in a battle against myself, but as I have grown in my faith, I’ve come to realize that the real fight is against evil in the form of a mental illness.  But, I’m not alone in this fight, I fight with Jesus by my side and it took a long time for me to realize that every time that I felt alone in the darkness, Jesus was my ever-present light.  My relationship with Christ has grown through the struggle of this mental illness and it is continually being shaped. I discover new things daily about religion, faith and myself even through the darkest parts of my life.   

I am not alone, nor forgotten.  Depression is a part of my story but does not define who I am or who I will be, Jesus’s love does.

In my weakness, he is strong. In my weakness, he is my joy. In my weakness, is he gone? I remember so vividly when a girl I had been dating for a year broke up with me. This break up really destroyed me. I thought I had everything together, and I was so happy that a girl would take the time to even show that they cared for me, besides those family and friends that obviously did. 

In the moment of what I thought was a massive catastrophe in my life, I asked the question: where is God? When I was dating this girl, this question seemed to be non-existent. But now, in the climax of my pain, it seemed to me that God was not around. This was a dark time for me where I not only questioned myself, but my faith as well. I would take long drives by myself, and as the miles passed by I would talk and ask God: where are you? Why did you do this to me? Don’t you care about my feelings? Don’t you want me to be happy? 

I yelled at God and I was angry with him for all the pain in my life, for everything that was going wrong, and for not providing me with relief from the situation. I think this is important in our weakness. So often I see how I hold back what I am feeling from God because I am afraid of some kind of judgment from him or reprimand for getting angry at God, but I don’t think God wants me to hold back – even the messy, ugly, raw parts of me like my anger or sadness. It’s when I hold back that I don’t fully give my problems to God.  It’s easy to hide these emotions because it is hard for me to believe he could fix them. When I can begin to let go of this pain to God, he begins to help me understand where he has been the whole time. 

In my time of pain, I began to learn just how close God had been to me. In my weakness, God was with me in my decision. In my weakness, God provided friends I wouldn’t have met had I still been in this relationship. In my weakness, God pushed me to apply to be a camp counselor. In my weakness, God showed me my errors: errors that revealed my true intentions for being in the relationship, errors of what was important to me. In my weakness, I had nothing, and in my weakness he made me something. 

God showed me that in my weakness he isn’t in front of me or behind me, but he is right beside me. Because God is everywhere, I believe he is with me. In times of pain, it is easy to lose faith, and it is easy for me to turn my back on everything I believe. But in these times where I often say, God, where are you? Christ shows us that he was there the entire time, all we sometimes need to do is reflect on where he has already been. It is when we begin to reflect that I think we become aware of his presence in our lives.   

In Genesis 3:8-13 it says, “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” What I realized from this time of reflection, is not ‘Where is God?’ but ‘Where am I?’ In my time of trouble, I began to understand that God is not some far off person that doesn’t care about my problems, or someone that is hiding from me. But, as Genesis 3:8-13 is saying someone I am hiding from. Because when I asked God where he was, he asked me where am I and revealed to me that he was next to me the whole time.