Maddy Reisinger
campus staff
About Maddy
Hometown: Fort Thomas, KY
School: Graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2021
Growing up, I had a pretty unconventional home life. I lived in a broken single-parent home until the age of seven when my mother passed away. My mom did her best to teach me about Jesus, but being so young and confused by the dysfunction in our household, I never fully understood the Gospel. After she passed, I moved in with my dad where we’d attend church on some holidays but not much else. This trend, along with the addition of loose involvement in a Christian youth organization, continued into high school when I moved in with my grandparents. I would attend youth camps and events where I would proclaim to live for Christ, only to come home and continue to live only for myself. My shallow attempts to “be a Christian” slowly dwindled over time and were replaced with looking solely to the approval and attention of others. I desperately craved to be deeply known and loved but hid behind the false image of what I thought others would love more and this draining tactic continued into college.
I came in as a freshman, spiritually teetering between "I guess God exists” and “I'm not sure what I believe". By sophomore year, I’d all but forgotten God and fully immersed myself in the party lifestyle. As in high school, I did whatever I thought I needed to in order to feel relevant and valued, even if it wasn’t what I really wanted. At the start of the second semester of my junior year, I had grown highly dissatisfied with every facet of my life as I realized that nothing I was running to could truly fulfill me. I yearned for something more, something real. After a sorority retreat where I shared that I was struggling, a girl I didn’t know much about, aside from the fact that she claimed to be a Christian, approached me afterward to talk. That girl was Fiona Quinn (also on staff with Campus Outreach Columbus). Not only did her compassion and care towards me, despite not knowing me very well, stand out but also the ways in which her life truly reflected what she claimed to believe. Her life looked so different from most of the Christians I had seen growing up. She loved others well but loved God even better and it sparked a curiosity in me that led to asking more questions about her faith and God.
Eventually, Fiona invited me to New Years Conference with Campus Outreach and somewhat begrudgingly, I went. At first, I felt out of place and the conference seemed like just another youth camp from back in high school. During one talk in which the speaker recounted things about God that I felt I’d heard too many times already, something clicked in a way that was altogether new. The message wasn’t profound or spectacular, but my perception was. The hardened heart I’d brought to that conference suddenly softened as God made it clear he wanted me to know Him. Finally, I could see. I knew from that point on that my life was going to be radically altered by the good news of the Gospel. I carried home with me a zeal to know the Lord that, unlike every time before, didn’t fade. I joined Campus Outreach as a student leader, got involved with a local church, and sought to better know and follow Jesus personally by reading God’s Word. The Lord worked through Fiona and the community of believers that I was blessed with in Campus Outreach to finally reveal Himself to me. He showed me then and continues to show me now that I have been fully loved and fully known all along, by Him.