Faithfully Following Despite Hardship

When Maddie talks about why she loves working with children, it doesn’t start with a classroom; it starts with her own story.

“I first discovered my love for working with children when I graduated high school and got my first job as a summer camp counselor in Minnesota for the Twin Cities,” she says.

Something clicked.

“It just made me want to help children more and connect with them and show them the type of love that they don’t always get at home.”

Then she pauses, “It reminded me of myself in a way.”

One child especially stayed with her.

“I’ll say her name is Erica,” Maddie says. “Erica really struggled at home, and it showed up in the classroom. She really struggled to manage her emotions, and how she responded to things made the environment unsafe for the other kids.”

But Maddie wasn’t frustrated with Erica; she understood her.

“I could see myself in her because I was the same way when I was six years old.” “I was in a really abusive and neglectful household until I was around six years old. I was put into the foster care system.”

Her story could have ended there; instead, it changed.

“I finally found my forever family. She’s a single mom who adopted two other kids along with me, and she showed us unconditional love. She showed us the value of education and fellowship and just trusting in God.”

That foundation mattered, but healing wasn’t instant.

“I still struggle with my past trauma from being in the foster care system and my home before,” Maddie said. Maddie carried that trauma with her into high school and eventually college.

“As I was navigating therapy, home life, and school life, I finally graduated high school.”

She found purpose working with kids, but once college began, life became much harder.

“All of the things that I learned, the foundation that my mom had built and instilled in me, kind of flew out the window. “I struggled with all types of things, with relationships, self-harm, and financial instability. I really hit rock bottom.”

She even found herself drifting away from the faith that had once been so important.

“I pretty much let go of all of the faith that my mom had worked so hard to instill in me, and I kind of stepped away from God.”

After graduating with a degree in data science, she expected to enter the tech world, but couldn’t find anything that felt like the right fit. That’s when her sister suggested something she hadn’t planned.

“My sister asked me to do an internship through CFUT, the Center for Urban Teaching, with her. As soon as I stepped into the gym on that first day, I felt like I was stepping into my calling. The environment was just so welcoming and loving, and everyone was just so happy to be there to support me and to help me grow.”

“I had that kindness from my mom, but I couldn’t really process that there were other people outside of my family that would care about me in that way.”

“So I slowly started picking back up on my faith.”

Coming back to God didn’t mean life suddenly became easy.

“As time went on, I started going through a lot of hardships and struggling with myself again, struggling with self-harm and financial instability, making bad decisions. But I still knew that I was a child of God, even if I wasn’t acting like one.”

After completing the CFUT program, she became a kindergarten lead teacher at St. Marcus. Along the way, God placed people around her who continued pointing her back to Him.

“Seeing other people’s faith and seeing them struggle but still know that they have God in their corner… it made me want to be more firm in my faith too. I wasn’t consistent. It was on and off. It was an uphill battle. It wasn’t linear at all. But I continued to work at it.”

Today, Maddie says her faith is stronger than it’s ever been, not because life has become easy, but because she knows she’s not walking through it alone.

“I love the community of teachers that I have been welcomed into, and I am now at a point in my life where my faith, even though sometimes it wavers, I’ll never give up on it.”