More Than What I'm Going Through | Sydney's SEEN Story

This is Sydney's story, shared in her own words, now part of the SEEN Hall of Stories.

Years ago, Sydney thought her life would look like this: a real relationship with God, living in a very dark place, struggling deeply with believing that she wasn't worth anything. She was bullied, talked about, had no real relationships that truly valued her. Like everyone was against her. More than once she watched the conflict between her biological father and her mother. People around her didn't want her. She tried to take her own life multiple times. She struggled with self-harm and thought that was the way she needed to cope. She thought God was far gone, and that her life didn't have a purpose.

But something changed.

The Turn

She started going to The Journey and kept asking to go with her sister. She always told her no. She thought it was a waste of time and someone like her didn't belong there. In seventh grade, her sister finally tricked her into going to youth for the first time.

She wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. She thought it was all a lie. She thought it was too good for God to want anything to do with her. But she kept going.

After about a month of youth, she signed up to go to Passion Camp. She was honestly dreading it. She wasn't very close with the girls in her group yet, and she was very open about things she had never told anyone. People honestly felt incredibly uncomfortable.

But that trip changed everything in her.

One of the speakers asked if anyone had ever felt the way she did, to stand up. She stood up. She looked around at everyone nodding, knowing exactly how they felt. She couldn't bring herself to get up. Her sister eventually came over and pulled her to her feet.

The last time she had self-harmed was about a month before that.

That night at Passion, something changed in her. A fire started growing in her heart that she never thought was possible. When it was time to write things down and burn them, everything she had been holding onto for so long was gone.

She still struggled afterward. She wanted a relationship with God, but part of her still struggled with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. She was too far gone. She was trying to depend on herself for everything instead of depending on the greatest opportunity she had placed around her.

She continued to struggle with suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and other things. But things began to change.

The Year Everything Shifted

The following year, her relationship with God and her faith became stronger. She wasn't self-harming anymore, and those thoughts began to become less and less frequent. In May of 2019, she got baptized.

At the time, she pushed herself to believe she was completely surrendered to God. Looking back, she realized there were still so many parts of her life she hadn't truly surrendered to God. But a few years later, everything changed again.

Right before her 17th birthday, she rushed to the hospital. She spent 13 days there, going through appointments, tests, and treatments while doctors tried to figure out what was happening with her body. She was diagnosed with severe POTS syndrome and multiple other conditions at the end of her life. She was not going to make it out of there.

She realized she couldn't do the things she had always taken for granted. She couldn't drive. She couldn't work. She couldn't even walk more than a few feet without depending on her parents and nurses to help her.

But something happened in that hospital that she never expected.

Her youth group loved her. She was in the hospital and started writing handwritten cards to every one of her group leaders and friends beside her hospital bed.

In that moment, she realized how much she had been depending on the people around her. God opened her eyes to something she had been missing for so long.

She realized how she wasn't meant to carry everything by herself.

She got better. She went home. She had community, and she had God. She realized she had only needed them when everything was going wrong. She realized she needed them all the time.

She Was Always More

Sydney's story is proof that what you're going through is never the whole story.

The girl who believed she wasn't worth anything became someone who writes handwritten cards to the people she loves from a hospital bed. The girl who thought God was far gone found herself surrounded by a community that showed up. The girl who couldn't see a future became someone whose story is now helping others find theirs.

She was never invisible. She was always more than what she was going through.

And so are you.

Your story isn't over. And the part you're in right now is not the final chapter.

If Sydney's story moved you, her full testimony is now live on the SEEN Hall of Stories. And if you have a story worth telling, we want to hear it. The Hall of Stories exists for people exactly like you.

Read more stories and share yours at the SEEN Hall of Stories.

You were never invisible.