At 10 years old, I was already asking big questions: Why am I still here? What purpose does God have for me?

I continued to attend church with my family, but things were still not good at home, and they were starting to get worse. As I moved into my teens, my mood changed drastically, and I was exhibiting signs of depression.

I didn’t like the way my family put on a show all the time. It seemed very hypocritical. Especially at church, we were not allowed talk about problems in our lives. My parents’ generation never talks about problems; they have to look good on the outside—anything bad happening in the family would make the parents look bad. So even if my mom and I had a huge fight in the car on the way to church, I had to put on a happy face before we went in. I hated it.

It was hard. But spiritually, things were going okay. I made Profession of Faith in the fall of my junior year.