Holding her Bible close, Sadie Lane spoke softly of scripture that says, “He makes beauty from ashes.”
For her, the ashes were a deadly school shooting nine years ago and a life-threatening eating disorder; the beauty, a spiritual quest that has led her on a mission to truly live out her faith.
You’re likely more familiar with Sadie’s brother, T.J. Lane.
His killing of three classmates and wounding of three others will forever be woven into the fabric of Chardon. The devastating tragedy cut deep into the community, and for many young people and their families, it irrevocably changed their lives.
It is an inescapable part of Sadie’s life, too. But her story comes with her own demons, not just her brother’s. Her journey has been fraught with loss, complications from an eating disorder and mental health issues.
However, those challenges have borne a renewed purpose and desire to spread hope to others.
“Jesus is my purpose and he does give us a purpose for life,” said Sadie. “The Bible says before we were even born, he planned our lives. There is a plan and divine destiny.”
Turning Point
Sadie, who was raised by her grandparents in Munson Township, said she grew up in a “strong Christian family.”
However, she hadn’t yet fully embraced the faith, instead pursuing New Age beliefs.
After battling anorexia and becoming suicidal following the Feb. 27, 2012, Chardon school shooting, Sadie, then 17, was checked into a mental health facility for teens in Beachwood, joining The Emily Program for eating disorder treatment.
“At first, when I was diagnosed, I rejected it all. I just resented everybody who was against (my eating disorder). The anorexia destroyed every relationship in my life,” recalled Sadie, now 23. “I was like, I don’t have a problem. Everyone else does (who’s) telling me I do. I was force fed and had to do everything the doctor said.”
During her stay, Sadie talked to nurses about her beliefs and they introduced her to a New Age chaplain.
“I came to the point where I was saying I believed there was a God, and then I came to Jesus and … then I paused, and I couldn’t figure it out. I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what I believe anymore. I don’t know who Jesus is,” Sadie said. “That was … the beginning of questioning. I think that’s really where coming back to Christianity began.”
After she left the facility, Sadie, still struggling with her eating disorder, began her spiritual quest.
While attending a Christian concert, she learned about a group called Teen Missions International.
Sadie signed up for a mission trip to Africa, but wanted to research more about Jesus and figure out her own faith before leaving.
“I had gone to a presentation on the Shroud of Turin, which was the cloth that Jesus was buried in,” she explained. “The guy who was giving the presentation was a scientist who actually worked on the shroud itself, so it was very powerful. That was the moment that I really did rededicate my life to Christ. It answered every question I had about was Jesus the Son of God.”
While in Zimbabwe, Sadie said she saw what “true Christianity” looked like.
“Getting out in Africa and seeing starving people, it changes you,” she said. “Being able to pray for them and seeing their faith when they have nothing, it really changed everything. I was like wow, these people are starving and I’m making myself starve when I have so much … it doesn’t make sense. Seeing them, I’m like, I don’t want to be thin anymore.”
When Sadie returned to the states, she felt healed.
“I didn’t think about the eating disorder anymore,” she said. “My mind wasn’t on myself anymore. It was on others.”
Ups and Downs
Sadie was “on fire for the Lord” over the next two years and thought nothing could take that away from her. She continued to build her faith, go to church and read scriptures from the Bible. However, negative thoughts about her self-worth crept back in.
“I didn’t have the knowledge and foundation about how to fight those thoughts from the Enemy,” she said. “I let those thoughts creep in and kind of take control again. I started back in the eating disorder pattern. This time it was worse than the first time. This time it was anorexia and bulimia. It just took control. So, now I was Christian, but I had anorexia and bulimia and I’m like, how is this happening?”
The relapse lasted only about a year, but hit her much harder and faster than her first bout.
Dehydration and panic attacks wreaked havoc on her health.
“I’m like, I can’t live like this anymore,” she recalled. “I felt like everything was so out of control and like, if I don’t stop this now, I’m going to die because my health was so bad and I felt so weak. I was so thin, even just laying down hurt because it was just bone on bones.”
One night, Sadie, afraid she might die in her sleep, had an epiphany at 3 a.m.
“I was remembering when I first came to the Lord. I was like, I’m missing something here, there has to be something more,” she said. “It was at that moment that I was like, if Jesus is everything he says he is, he’ll get me out of this. I just need to give myself over to him and let him heal me. I need to be willing to fight the good fight like the Gospel says and I can’t give up because he’s worth it in the end. He’s worth everything.”
Sadie woke her grandmother, shared her secret struggles and confessed she did not want to live that way anymore. The next day, she started replacing the negative thoughts with daily scriptures, readings and sermons.
“It was a constant battle,” she said. “I couldn’t just leave my mind to myself. If I wasn’t working or doing something, I had to be either listening to scripture, reading scripture, listening to a sermon or something so my mind wouldn’t go to those negative places.”
Slowly but surely, those thoughts quieted and Sadie began to feel freedom.
“I began to experience joy again and happiness. Even though I was gaining weight, every time I stepped on the scale, I would picture all of Heaven rejoicing,” she said.
While her journey continues to have challenges, she navigates them through her faith — as evidenced by a recent foray into personal training.
Sadie discovered a passion for physical fitness while earning an Associate of Arts Degree at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland. At first, her experience working out at the college gym was healthy and positive. She even later got certified as a personal trainer.
But eventually, it became about “vanity,” so she left it behind.
“Within the last year or two, the Lord has been pulling me out of that whole thing,” she said. “I actually just quit personal training.”
Reconciling the Past
Sadie, who was 15 at the time of the school shooting, was in the Chardon High School cafeteria when her brother opened fire.
“I heard everything. I didn’t actually see it happen,” she recalled, adding she lost her older half-brother, Adam Nolan, to a heroin overdose within a year of T.J. being sentenced to three life terms in prison without parole.
Sadie prays for T.J. every day. She said he exhibits signs of someone who has schizophrenia disorder, including hearing voices in his head. She believes those to be demonic in nature, just as she felt her eating disorder was, and similarly, they have impacted his relationships with family.
“(Sometimes) he won’t talk to us, sometimes he will. We haven’t seen him in probably over a year,” she said. “I don’t think he understands reality. Every time we talk to him, he says he’s being tortured, (but) we don’t actually know because … prison life. He’s been beat, there’s been terrible things done to him physically, but we also know mentally he’s being tortured and hearing voices all the time. So, it’s always hard to differentiate when he says that that it’s actual physical torture or mental.”
Sadie believes T.J. on the day of the shooting was not the T.J. she knew and loved growing up together in their grandparents’ home.
“We see glimpses of (who we knew) once in a while and it gives us hope,” she said.
While Sadie does not regret telling the public after her brother’s sentencing that she still loves him, she does wish she had not called herself a victim. Now more mature in her faith, she sees it differently.
“I’m not a victim,” she said. “Tragedies do happen, but in Christ we overcome those things. I do feel like the Lord has restored me and my journey through healing from all of that. I just want others to experience that. I want my brother to experience that. I want the families who went through the tragedy to experience that and all the kids who were in the cafeteria that day to not be bound by this trauma that happened.
“The Enemy took so much from so many people that day, but when you seek (Jesus), he restores and delivers. What he has done in my life is a perfect picture of that. He has delivered me from so much,” she continued. “I feel that all the families who lost people that day, that the Lord can restore and deliver to them what was stolen from them … even if it was through my brother.”
Following her many years of struggles, as well as coming to terms with T.J.’s actions and Adam’s overdose, Sadie has often thought about the difference between her fate and those of her brothers.
“I had always asked for the longest time why the Enemy took my brothers, (but when) he tried to take me, why I was the only one who couldn’t succumb to that,” she said. “My only answer is Jesus and fighting the good fight.”
