Tyler is a community group leader at Mars Hill Tacoma who is about to finish physical therapy school. He loves Jesus and wants to marry a godly woman and carry on the legacy he started when he became the first Christian in his family. When you meet him, you can’t help but notice that he’s happy, excited, and passionate. So it’s hard to believe that just a few short years ago, he almost killed himself. Twice. This is his story.
*Some of the names in this story have been changed.
Growing up in Spokane, Washington, Tyler was the shy kid in high school who didn’t have many friends. He struggled with self-doubt, confidence, and value.
“I always wanted to be part of the crowd but I was pretty much alone.” Tyler never did the “bad things” and, in contrast to his brother and sister who struggled with drugs and alcohol, his family often saw him as perfect.
In the fall of 2007, Tyler enrolled full time in Spokane Falls Community College. There, he became more isolated and lonely than he had been in high school. However, a short time later a small group of people befriended him.
“They were the first people in my life that were actually my friends,” Tyler says. “They cared for and ministered to me. And they were Christians.”
Tyler developed a major crush on one of the girls in the group named Megan.
“I fell in love with her and idolized her,” he said.
Never had he loved anyone like this. The feelings of affection were mutual. Their friendship progressed to the point where one of them needed to define what was going on. Then one evening Megan told Tyler, “The next person I date is going to be my husband. I don’t want to date a non-Christian.”
Tyler was furious. He told her he didn’t want to be a Christian and she should love him for who he was. He became depressed. The feeling of finally having a woman he loved only to find she didn’t want to be with him brought his life crashing down. Tyler thought the possibility of a relationship was over.
“You’re my son and I love you”
During this time, one of the Christian guys in the group shared some Bible verses with him. Tyler remembers being caught off guard by the possible truth of the verses. He prayed and asked God, if he was indeed real, to show himself.
It was late at night and Tyler wanted to sleep but couldn’t. All he could think about was going to church. He had never been to church before but suddenly, it was all he wanted to do.
The next day he told his friends and, before the weekend hit, they took him to the college ministry they were a part of. The leader of the ministry taught about Jesus and shared the gospel. When he was finished, he prayed and said if anyone wanted to repent of their sin and turn toward Jesus, they should raise their hand and look up at him.
“I remember I was like, ‘Oh, that’s me,’” Tyler said. “So I stuck my hand up then thought, ‘Wait a minute, what did I just do?’ But I knew that was what I wanted.”
Afterward the college pastor approached him with a Bible and a hug. Tyler took that student Bible home and soaked it up. He started reading in Matthew and loved it. The next week at his second college group, he understood the gospel even more.
This group wasn’t your typical college ministry. There was no teaching. Music played quietly in the background as people shared stories of how God was working in their lives.
“I broke down and wept the whole night,” Tyler said. “I recognized who I was in Jesus. God kept showing me pictures of the cross and I remember hearing over and over, ‘You’re my son and I love you.’ That was where I really grasped what the gospel was in my life.”
“I turned my idolization from one form to another”
Tyler grew in biblical knowledge and learned how to lead others in the college ministry and the junior high group at the church he was now regularly a part of. In the fall of 2009, he transferred to Eastern Washington University and moved into a house filled with college friends. He was growing in his relationship with Jesus and loving it, but one thing still bothered him. While the depression over Megan had gone away, he realized he was still idolizing her.
“I turned my idolization from one form to another,” Tyler says. “Before, she was my everything. Now, she was still my everything, but in addition I put Christian tags on it. I overcommitted in my heart. I thought, ‘This is the life I want to have with her. We’ll be this amazing Christian couple and have kids.’ The [idea of a] relationship became overpowering in my heart.”
Overwhelmed from the constant attention and expectations, Megan distanced herself from Tyler and the rest of their friends. She found new friends and started going to bars, drinking to excess, and getting drunk. Tyler panicked and pursued her harder in an attempt to save her from her lifestyle.
“I destroyed her,” he says. “I hurt her immensely in that.”
With the continuing pressure, Megan stopped going to church and the college ministry. She didn’t hang out with anyone in the group.
“It completely destroyed me to the point where I started getting depressed again, running away, and not being involved in the church, as well,” said Tyler. “My depression got bad enough to where I became suicidal. It lasted for about 12–18 months. I lost my job. I didn’t want to do anything. I would sit in my room and cry. I thought about killing myself all the time.”
Two incidents brought him close to suicide.
The first occurred in the summer of 2011, between his last year of college and his first year of physical therapy school. Tyler’s house in Spokane is near a series of cliffs and dense woods. One night he stood on the cliffs and contemplated jumping to his death. A friend discovered he was there and came to help him.
“I honestly can’t remember much detail about what he said. We talked for a while and then he brought me home.”
The second incident occurred in the fall of 2011, shortly after he moved to Tacoma and started school at the University of Puget Sound.
“I would go to school and come home and not study,” he says. “I would break down and cry and get angry. I think it was the combination of being alone, stress from school, feeling like a failure, living away from Spokane, and the deep depression.”
It was the lowest point in Tyler’s life. One night he lay on his floor, completely empty. A bottle of pills was in his hand and he wanted to swallow them all to end his life.
“It’s tough to explain the feeling, but it’s almost as though I felt void of life itself,” he said.
His thoughts were interrupted by a phone call from a friend in Spokane. As they talked, Tyler explained the seriousness of the situation. The friend spoke to Tyler for a long time and then told him he was going to get their mutual friend, who had recently moved to Seattle, to come see Tyler. What he didn’t tell Tyler was that he was also going to call the police. The police were at the door five minutes later and stayed until the friend from Seattle showed up.
The beginning of growth
Shortly after this second incident, Tyler started going to Mars Hill Federal Way (now Mars Hill Tacoma), prompted by an invite from his Seattle friend. On his first visit, Tyler ran into a classmate from the physical therapy program. This classmate had no idea that anything was wrong in Tyler’s life.
“I think I was good at hiding [my depression],” Tyler said. “I could go and [hang out] socially but at the same time I hated my life. I hated everything. I hated the city. I hated myself. I was so empty. The whole time I would say I was a Christian but I was still trying to do things myself. I remember in my lowest, God was there. He was saying, ‘I’m not going to let you go. I’m not going to let you do this.’ His presence was there. He kept saying, ‘I love you. I still love you.
“I had times where I was up and then down. I felt like if I wasn’t going to be with Megan, then I was going to be nothing. She was still my everything. I finally got to the point where I felt like something needed to happen.”
Tyler felt God telling him that he either needed to give her up, or God was going to take Megan from him.
Tyler would occasionally contact Megan and she usually told him she was doing well and didn’t want to see him. Shortly after moving to Tacoma, he told her he wanted to kill himself if he couldn’t be with her. She called the University of Puget Sound and they required him to do four counseling sessions.
After that she messaged him on Facebook to say, “You need to let me go. It’s not going to happen. I’m gay and I’ve been in a relationship for eight months.”
Tyler had heard she was in a relationship but never thought it could be with a woman. “At first I didn’t want to believe it and I told her it couldn’t be true.”
But that Facebook message flipped a switch in Tyler’s brain. He finally saw that Megan was a regular human being with flaws like everybody else. And then his focus shifted.
“For so long it had been all about me,” he said. “All of a sudden . . . I realized the depravity in her life. I’ll never forget what she told me. She said, ‘I finally found someone who loves me for who I am and I’m happy.’ All I could think was, Jesus loves you for who you are and you’re rejecting that.’ From that point on, I didn’t care if we ended up together. All I cared about was her.”
However, Tyler’s thinking about sin had yet to be corrected. He was under the impression that Megan’s sin was somehow worse than his own.
“I was still very troubled, but I had stopped idolizing her and finally turned back to Jesus. I was fortunate enough to still be at Mars Hill with some good guys and a community group. I met with them and told them my whole story.”
That’s when the correction came. After hearing Tyler’s story, the leader had some hard words for him.
“He said, ‘What if she was committing sexual sin with a guy? It’s still sexual sin. What about you making an idol of her? What about the gospel in your life? Jesus died to save you. And you can’t save her. Jesus needs to save her and you need to give that up.’”
Tyler says it was “sucky” to hear that but he knew it was what he needed. A couple months later he went back to Spokane for his summer break and worked at resetting his life. When he returned to Tacoma for his second year of school, he was no longer depressed. He took the membership class at church, got more involved in community group, and started serving.
“God wanted to show me who he is”
A short time after that, Megan cut him off. She un-friended Tyler on Facebook and had her brothers “ask” him to delete her number. Tyler felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Tyler continued to grow and took over leading his community group in January 2014. That had never been something he wanted to do before, but he felt like God was calling him to serve in that way.
“I never expected God to give me such a heart for these people,” Tyler says. “It’s been pretty amazing. It’s made me grow [in] my dependence on God. I had to say to God, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing but you know. Here I am. Use me as you can.’
“Pastor Mark recently asked in one of his sermons, what is life? Life for me was a girl. Now life is Jesus. I don’t know if I would have been able to understand that had God not moved me to Tacoma and brought me to Mars Hill Church.
“It’s weird for me to look back and think there was a phase in my life where I was depressed and suicidal, even though I had a loving, supporting family, [was] involved in church, and [was] surrounded by friends who love Jesus.”
Tyler realized that, even in the midst of that, if Jesus isn’t present and shaping your life every day, then you can still waver and fall.
“Through all this, God wanted to show me who he is—not what I thought he was or what I wanted him to be. God cultivated my heart by destroying my idols. He broke me down to the point where I had nothing. After that, the only thing I could have was him.”
Tyler feels like he’s in a good spot now and has an eye on the future. In 40–50 years he wants his legacy to be that of a grandfather that loves his family, serves the church, and is growing daily in his relationship with Jesus. Since Tyler became a Christian, his father has met Jesus. He hopes more of his family will turn to Jesus as well.
“I get to be the first Christian in my family. The Malachi sermon series was encouraging to me because I saw that generations could change. The Trudeau name before my time had a lot of sin. But that can change with one person.”
For people struggling with depression:
Tyler wanted to encourage those struggling with depression to let other people know. Often, someone struggling might tell one person, but Tyler said to let multiple people know so they can help. And if you know someone who is struggling with depression, he said it’s your responsibility to bring others in, whether they want you to or not. It might just save their life.
If you have a story you would like to share with the church, please submit it here. We love to hear how God is revealing himself through his people.
