Student Finds Joy Through Young Life Program

Photo by Annie Lomshek

“Young Life tonight! My house! 7:30!”

Senior Emma Goode stands outside of school screaming as she hands out free Lamar’s donuts, urging anyone and everyone to join her for what she calls her favorite part of the week.

Goode wasn’t always so comfortable speaking up. Freshman year, Emma found herself in a completely different environment than the 75-person grade of people she had known her whole life in Catholic school. Although she seemed outgoing, she was internally anxious all the time. Her primary goal going into high school was to be loved by everyone who crossed her path.

“I wanted to change and be a very confident person in high school,” Emma said. “[Approval] was such a big thing to me because I wanted to be known, I wanted to be someone who people actually cared about.”

After going to Curé of Ars Catholic school, Goode’s mom told her that to go to East, she had to stay involved in her faith. As a kid, Emma found herself going through the motions of Catholicism – she knew hard facts about the Bible, went to church every Sunday and did her best to follow what seemed like endless rules that were put in place. Goode knew that she would stop going to Catholic church in high school because the religion never clicked for her. Now, Goode attends a nondenominational Christian church.

“We’re just happy that she has found what she loves,” Emma’s mother, Katie Goode, said. “So, I am OK with her not going to [Catholic church] with us every Sunday. If she’s following God, I don’t care.”

Emma started going to Young Life freshman year to please her mother, after a neighbor introduced her to the Christian Ministry program. Suddenly, her Wednesdays meant Young Life. The summer after freshman year, she decided to attend a Young Life camp with the motto best week of your life. She can now confirm that the best week of her life was also when she decided to have a relationship with God.
“Growing up, I had always had a strong identity in knowing there was a God, but I never loved the idea of the Catholic church,” Emma said. “I was always told that it was about religion, but in Young Life I’ve been told that it’s about my relationship with Jesus, and I think that’s what actually turned me onto Young Life.”

Authority has always been a problem for Emma. She finds herself terrified of saying the wrong things to the authority figures. The biggest thing that Emma realized about God through Young Life was that he wasn’t an authoritarian figure who slapped her on the hands everytime she did something wrong, but rather a loving figure who truly wanted to know her.

Now she finds comfort in knowing she has her Young Life leaders and God, who will love her unconditionally. She used to surround herself with people who didn’t care about her. She invited herself to events, and she began to drift from her childhood best friends.

Emma chose to revolve her life around God at Young Life’s Castaway Camp. There were multiple different young people who got up and told their stories about how they found God. Emma found herself relating to these stories, especially ones that involved suicide, a topic she was familiar with because her childhood best friend was suicidal.

Emma shared her story about her friend who struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts all throughout grade school. She told these new friends that she couldn’t help but blame herself for the most recent attempt. While her friend was struggling to stay alive, Emma was going to parties and trying to make everyone love her instead of noticing that her beloved childhood friend was contemplating ending her life.

Emma’s fellow campers immediately consoled her and told her that her friend’s inclination to end her life couldn’t have been stopped by Emma.

Later in the week, Wendy Franco, her Young Life leader, asked if she wanted to hang out. Emma was flattered that anyone would want to hang out with her – among the hundreds of campers that were there.

Franco and Emma sat down by the lake in Michigan on a bench and after talking, Franco asked Emma if she could pray over her. Although Emma doesn’t remember exactly what was said, she felt the weight of her past struggles being lifted off of her shoulders. She realized she had a father in heaven who loved her unconditionally, no matter what she said or how she acted. She found where she belonged.

“I think Emma has really found where she fits in and what she wants to be a part of,” senior Hayley Bell said. “Young Life has been a constant through her transitions [between friend groups]. I think it’s the reason she’s found so much happiness.”

Now, every Wednesday night, Emma stands confidently at the front of her basement while she leads her peers closer to Christ. According to Goode, she has found something incredible, and she wants the whole world to know about it.