On Thursday, April 11, 2024, senior Hannah Jackson spoke at the weekly chapel. Hannah’s speech marked the third time this year that students have spoken at chapel. She also set a recent record, becoming the sixth student to speak in a school year. The previous year had only five student speakers; the year before that, none.
Hannah, like others before her, shared a story of faith and of how God is working in her life. Her story was inspired by her character study of Jesus, an essay that all seniors wrote in English class. Hannah courageously shared her struggles with the school and how the poise of Jesus has encouraged her. This is what she had to say:
In the third quarter of this year, Mr. Himick asked my class to do a character study of Jesus. One characteristic that stuck out to me was poise. I had always understood poise as how one presents themselves to other people, but this study helped me see poise as a function of identity.
Poise is the balance of all the characteristics that sum up who people are. Just like the rest of humanity, Jesus has poise; He has a center. However, unlike the rest of humanity, Jesus’s identity is centered around God the Father, and because of this He can confidently extend His identity out into the world.
Writing this essay challenged me to consider what my own identity has been centered around. Throughout my life, I have known of Jesus. I went to church, prayed before every meal, and sang every song during worship. For a while, I thought that doing these things was enough and that this was what a Christian was supposed to be: knowing the right things and attempting to do them. But, although I don’t know the exact moment, I came to realize that something was missing. I went through the motions, making sure to appear like I had perfected them, but I didn’t feel any connection to God.
When praying, I was merely reciting words, and at church, I found myself memorizing the approximate time the pastor would be done speaking, not listening to the message and taking it to heart. The realization that hit me the hardest was my impartiality to worship music. Every once in a while, it would stir up something inside of me, but it never affected me the way I thought it should. I have always looked up to my dad, and I have seen the impact worship music makes on him. For him, that is one of the ways he connects to God, and I always thought it would be the same for me. It wasn’t.
After I started to see my separation from God, I began to question everything. I was spiraling, and it hurt to think about it. I was upset, but I didn’t know who to blame. I knew in my heart that it would be wrong to blame God, but I also refused to blame myself. Already struggling with low self-esteem, I didn’t think I could take another blow. I didn’t want everything to be my fault because I knew I wouldn’t be able to recover.
So, I shoved it into the tight recesses and small corners of my mind and tried to forget about it. However, I was deathly afraid. I was afraid of anyone discovering my secret: my parents, my teachers, or my peers. I played along during class and church, pretending for my own conscience that I had everything together. Of course, as I soon found out, everyone reaches a breaking point.
For me, my so-called “rock bottom” wasn’t a singular event, but a series of circumstances and situations that demoralized and further injured my sense of self.
These things came to a head during my sophomore year of high school. Although I tried to put on a good face, the anxiety that had been in me since I was young began to seep out rapidly. It affected everything I did. No matter the time or place, my body would react in ways that weren’t appropriate for the situation. It confused me.
My heart would pound and my mind would race trying to walk through the doors at school. I would play conversations over and over in my head before speaking, petrified that someone would hate me if I said one wrong word. In situations that I had every reason to be confident in, my head would tell me that everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, and it was my fault, and all I could do was make it worse.
I began to believe the lies my mind would make up, convincing me that my friends merely tolerated me and that no one really liked me. It would tell me that I was never good enough and that I never would be, that I was an annoyance to everyone around me. My body would curl in on itself, paralyzed with misplaced fear. I started to go home every night and cry before I fell asleep, angry and distraught. I was bitter that I existed. I recall wishing that God had never made me, that my mother had never given birth to me, and that I could just dissipate into air. I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to be anywhere. I started to have panic attacks, and my anxiety became more apparent to other people. Eventually, and thankfully, I got help through therapy and various medications.
Through all of these trials, I came to the understanding that I knew of Jesus, but I didn’t know Jesus. To clarify, I knew the person of Jesus, as in basic Bible stories, all the “churchy” answers, and some of the things Jesus wanted me to do. However, I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus.
I couldn’t talk to Him, and I certainly didn’t know how to see Him in my life. I often described it as a glass ceiling. Whenever I put in a small amount of effort and I didn’t hear anything back, I was under the impression that I was just talking to dead air, that my words never reached God’s ears, or, the scarier thought, that I wasn’t worth His consideration. I have a suspicion that a lot of people are in the same position I was.
For a while, I didn’t care enough to change it. Yes, I wanted my life to be different, but I thought that maybe the Christian life just wasn’t for me. I was stuck. I wasn’t chosen, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Even more depressing to me, I thought that maybe this was all there was and that everyone was just putting on a facade. That was a foolish idea.
Looking back, I can see how these thoughts played off of my own self-pity and my attempt to not bear the responsibility of my own salvation. I was jealous of the relationship other people had with God, but I didn’t try to make one with Him myself. I was upset with God for not ripping me away from the world and shaking me until I understood His love, but that was simply my arrogance. To see God move in my life, I had to want to see God move. More than likely, I was just ignoring every attempt He made, chalking it up to chance or “that’s just the way things are.”
But, God did not give up on me.
Over this past summer, I had a conversation with a friend that sparked something in me. We talked for hours downtown, sharing both of our struggles, before she encouraged me to talk with Mr. Himick. Somehow, he was available at that very moment, and I was able to divulge to him all that had been pressing on my heart. Mr. Himick invited me to his Wednesday night Bible study, and, of course, my stubborn self didn’t attend until months after the offer. I kept making excuses until the day that I was so fed up with myself, I just went. After all, to get something done, you just have to do it; there’s no other way around it.
After I had been attending for a while, I began noticing changes in my life. I was happier, my relationships were better, and life seemed more vivid to me. Worship music began to have an impact on me, because I finally could relate to what I was singing. It wasn’t some overwhelming change that shook me to my core, but all the little things that added up. Every time I noticed a difference, I would think to myself, “God is good.”
Attributing these things to God helped me see Him more and appreciate the things He was doing in my life. Eventually, there was a circumstance that challenged me. God was asking me to do things that I didn’t feel capable of doing, in a situation I had never been in before.
It was at this time that God placed Ellie Neethling in my life.
I met her, of course, through Mr. Neethling. I would see her at every volleyball game, vigorously cheering the team on. Before the season ended, she told a couple of other girls and I that she felt as though God was asking her to reach out to us. This is yet another example of God’s goodness, because Ellie would become a fundamental person in my faith. Ellie wanted to know me and guide me in a way I didn’t know existed. She didn’t look down on me for the things I said or what I had been through. I didn’t have to fear judgment from her, which meant I could ask all the questions I wanted. Her gentleness was what I knew I needed but never thought I could find. Over a series of weeks, Ellie helped me process things through a godly lens, challenging me to ask God to make me into the person He had called me to be.
Ellie is one of those people who you can feel God moving through. You can almost see the Spirit rippling across her soul, like running water brushing over stones in a stream. It’s clear to me now that this is because Ellie’s identity is in Jesus. She was showing me how He loves.
So, when I reached a point where I felt that God was asking me to do something that I thought wasn’t possible for me, I went to Ellie. She spoke to me in a way that moved my heart. After talking with her about my struggle, the conversation naturally shifted to what God was trying to tell me through this situation. Through our discussion, I was made aware of my own position with God and how I could fix it. It’s so simple that it seems silly: all I had to do was tell God that I wanted to serve Him and that I know He is king over my life.
It makes so much sense, but I needed someone to lead me through it. My issue was that I was trying to be a Christian on my own, and it just doesn’t work. I failed, then felt bad for failing, and then felt even worse because of how I felt. The cycle never ended. I was tired, but I learned that God’s way is better.
When Ellie prayed over me, she said words that I had never heard spoken to me before. She said, “And Jesus, now that Hannah has given you her life and recognized you as Lord over it, she will spend eternity with you in heaven.” It honestly makes me emotional to think about it. For some reason, whenever I heard the phrase “you can go to heaven,” I always thought of it as something that applied to other people, not something I could have myself. I never personalized it, which was my problem in the first place. I never made God mine or let me be His; I never took my faith as my own and clung to it.
I didn’t understand when people talked about belief because I had never experienced it for myself. I knew of Jesus, and I understood the concept of Him, but I could never speak of a relationship with Him. Now, I can boldly say that I am a Christian because I know with my soul that I am. It’s in my bones and it’s in my blood, and I know that God’s presence is with me.
I know it sounds cliche, but God has shown up in ways I didn’t think were possible — the most prominent of these being in my mental health. I have struggled with anxiety all my life. It’s been a burden, a crushing weight that I thought would consume me on more than one occasion. God has taken this thing that I see as a flaw in myself and made it better. By better, I mean that He gave it a purpose.
I realized this soon after I came to faith while sitting in chapel. For some reason, as I often am, I was anxious for no reason. I could feel the heat rising in my skin and the chills settling into my body. I felt my heart begin to beat faster and my breathing become more and more irregular, my stomach turning with each rise and fall of my chest. My mind instantly went to God. I asked Him to still my heart, and He did. As soon as I asked, I could no longer become anxious.
This genuinely scared me, and so I tried to create the symptoms of anxiety I had felt just moments before. My body would not allow me. Instead, on multiple occasions, I have felt God asking me to do something that causes me anxiety. I ask Him to still my heart and give me strength if it is what He wants, and He does. It’s so beautiful to me that the very thing I hated about myself, God turned it into something of use, something that works for His good. There’s no other way to put it: God is better.
I have witnessed firsthand what the poise of Jesus looks like in other people. I have seen what it looks like to have your identity in Jesus. I have always worried about how I seem to other people, but I don’t need to worry about that anymore. I understand now that if our identity is rooted in Jesus, He will be seen through us.
I think the conclusion of my essay is what helped change my perspective. I wrote, “Unlike the rest of humanity, Jesus’s identity is centered around God. People are possessive over their identity and want to be individually important. Extending their identity to another person simply isn’t an option. But Jesus wants to share His identity with all. Jesus’s identity can extend beyond Himself because it’s not reliant on Him; it relies on God. The well of God’s character has a never-ending flow, meaning Jesus can stretch it across the universe and it will never grow thin. Jesus’s poise, the balance of all His characteristics, will never tilt because God Himself is unwavering.”
It’s difficult for me to comprehend how perfectly Jesus and God mesh together. It’s even more mind-bending that they want to fit us into their dazzling image. But they do. When I lacked the will to change, Mr. Himick told me this over and over again: “Run the experiment, and the results will follow.” So I would like to encourage you: run the experiment. Seek with all your heart, and God will not fail.
Hannah’s speech inspired several people to come to faith in Jesus, and many huddled together and prayed with their peers and teachers. First-period classes were canceled as students spontaneously spent time with each other in the Lord. Without a doubt, many students were helped by Hannah’s speech. The impact that student speakers have on the student body and the privilege of having students speak at chapel should not be taken for granted, nor should the impact that Jesus is having on Judah this year.
—Zach Schaefer, class of ’25
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