Forty-eight hours after arriving at a four-day training in Nashville, I found myself sitting among people who had been strangers only two days earlier, listening as they told me how they were experiencing me.
This seemed like a terrible idea.
The exercise required us to listen without explaining ourselves, defending our intentions, or correcting another person’s perception. After each person spoke, our response was supposed to be simple: “Thank you for caring enough to be honest with me.” Easier said than done. I had spent much of my life becoming remarkably good at reading other people. Sitting quietly while they read me was another matter entirely.
The facilitators encouraged us to pay attention to feedback that caught us off guard. Occasionally someone would say something that landed like a gut punch, exposing what we believed we had hidden remarkably well, or perhaps something we hadn’t even recognized in ourselves.
Mine came from a young woman in her twenties who had known me for approximately forty-eight hours. Looking directly at me, she said, “I experience you, Kirsten, as smiling and encouraging of others, but I’m pretty sure that deep down inside, you’re screaming, ‘What the fuck!’”
Well then.
For a moment, words completely failed me. The prescribed response vanished, along with any ability to invent a suitable substitute. Recognizing my struggle, the facilitator gently coached me through it, practically feeding me the words one at a time. Somehow I managed to repeat, “Thank you for caring enough to be honest with me,” and the exercise continued.
But I couldn’t move on from what she had said.
Her words struck something I hadn’t known how to recognize, much less articulate. I felt rattled and strangely understood. The smiling, encouraging woman she had encountered was real; caring for people came naturally to me. Yet this near stranger had looked beyond my familiar expressions of faithfulness and responsibility and perceived what I kept concealed.
She had seen frustration beneath my smile, disappointment I could barely admit to myself, and anger I wasn’t certain I had permission to feel. I loved Jesus. That had never been in doubt. Yet I had questions I rarely allowed anyone to hear, and some of my disappointment had deepened into anger, even toward God. Acknowledging it felt dangerously honest.
Later, I went looking for the young woman. How had she noticed something in forty-eight hours that I had lived with for years without finding words for it? Much of our second conversation has faded from memory, but one observation remained. She wondered whether I had learned to live in a hidden place, presenting myself as though everything were fine even when it wasn’t.
Hiding.
Only later could I begin to recognize a belief that had quietly shaped my relationships: perhaps people would love me more easily if I didn’t need anything from them. Encouragement, competence, and availability made connection feel possible; expressing disappointment or need introduced the possibility that someone might not welcome me. At the time, I couldn’t yet see how thoroughly protecting my heart had also confined it.
At the time, however, the suggestion that I might be hiding seemed almost ridiculous. Withdrawal wasn’t exactly my reputation. People knew me as outgoing, involved, and willing to initiate connection. Conversations with strangers came easily, and serving others had been woven into my life for years. How could someone so consistently present among people be hiding from them?
The question followed me home.
Growing up with an alcoholic father had made me remarkably attentive to the emotional landscape of a room. There were familiar land mines: certain subjects, moods, words, and subtle shifts in atmosphere that could change everything. Accidentally stepping on one could create collateral damage, and I had learned to notice where they were.
Watching, anticipating, and adjusting had become second nature. Sometimes the wisest response seemed to be making myself smaller or quietly moving around whatever might provoke an explosion. Those instincts helped me navigate circumstances I couldn’t control. What I was only beginning to recognize was how much responsibility had become entangled with my vigilance. Somewhere along the way, noticing the possibility of trouble had begun to feel remarkably similar to being responsible for preventing it.
Although those childhood rooms were long behind me, their familiar patterns had accompanied me into adulthood. Someone else’s disappointment could send me searching for what I needed to change. A subtle expression of disapproval might cause me to reconsider words I had been about to speak. Without consciously deciding to do so, I could anticipate what would make another person comfortable and adjust myself accordingly.
The difficulty was that many of these qualities were admirable. Empathy, responsibility, encouragement, and attentiveness were genuine expressions of who I was. I didn’t want to abandon them. But could I remain attentive to another person’s heart without assuming responsibility for everything happening inside it?
Reading a room had become almost effortless. Remaining fully present to myself while standing in it was another matter.
Could this be hiding? It didn’t always mean leaving the room. Sometimes I could disappear while standing in the middle of it.
Once that possibility had been introduced, ordinary memories began resurfacing.
While shopping one day, I spotted someone whose previous actions had hurt me. Rather than risk an uncomfortable encounter, I ducked behind a store mannequin and waited until the person had gone.
Yes, an actual mannequin.
After determining that the coast was clear, I emerged from my highly sophisticated hiding place and continued shopping as though nothing unusual had happened.
Another time, rounding a corner in the grocery store, I spotted someone I preferred not to encounter and promptly changed aisles. Most of us have avoided an awkward conversation. What surprised me was how instinctively I had found my escape.
Apparently, hiding wasn’t quite as foreign to me as I had imagined.
Those incidents were almost amusing in their obviousness. At least behind the mannequin I had physically removed myself from view. The more consequential discovery was that I could accomplish much the same thing while remaining actively engaged with another person.
For years I had thought of myself as something of a chameleon, a description I wore with pride. Connecting with different kinds of people seemed a strength. I could enter unfamiliar environments, recognize what mattered to someone, and find common ground.
But entering a room also meant registering expressions, tone, interests, and apparent expectations. Certain subjects seemed welcome; others were best avoided. The adjustments happened so naturally that I rarely noticed them.
Changing colors had become an art.
Hiding could borrow the appearance of something good. Helpfulness focused attention on someone else’s needs. Competence allowed me to contribute without exposing uncertainty. Encouragement made room for another person’s emotions while mine remained unspoken. Even empathy could conceal the parts of myself I wasn’t sure anyone would welcome.
The qualities weren’t false, and neither was the care behind them. But I had grown accustomed to deciding which parts of myself were allowed to participate.
Relationship was precisely what I wanted. I longed to be included, known, and wanted. Yet the strategies I used to maintain connection could prevent another person from encountering more than the version of myself I believed they would welcome.
I wasn’t necessarily hiding from relationship. I was beginning to recognize how thoroughly I could hide within it.
Still unsettled by the woman’s observation, I reached out to a ministry I respected and asked whether they had any resources that might help me understand hiding. They didn’t have a resource specifically addressing the subject, but later that day someone offered a question for me to consider.
“Consider where you have partnered with hiding to keep yourself safe.”
At first the wording struck me as odd. Partnered with hiding? I wasn’t sure what that meant. But the question lingered, carrying an invitation I couldn’t dismiss.
As I considered it with Jesus, the mannequin and grocery aisle came back to mind, along with countless quieter adjustments I’d made to avoid an uncomfortable response. How often had I relied on those instincts to protect myself?
Then, somewhere within that conversation, I sensed Jesus ask me something I had never considered.
“Why don’t you stop trusting hiding to keep you safe and let Me protect you instead?”
What struck me wasn’t accusation but tenderness. He seemed to understand why I had learned to hide, without suggesting I needed to keep trusting it.
My response wasn’t particularly eloquent. I remember saying something like, “Jesus, please forgive me for trusting myself and hiding over trusting You.”
Even now, those words sound more religious than the moment felt. What remains vivid is the vulnerability of admitting what I was beginning to see, and the sense that Jesus had heard me.
Three days later, I walked into church.
For some time I had been trying to develop friendships at church. When my efforts seemed to go nowhere, I supplied an explanation: these women already had their friends, their lives were full, and they didn’t need another person looking for a place among them. Apparently that meant me.
The conclusion had become familiar enough to feel like fact.
Then two women I had previously approached saw me in the hallway, greeted me by name, and asked whether we could get together for coffee.
I was dumbfounded.
I don’t know whether anything had changed for them, and I wouldn’t suggest that my prayer orchestrated their invitation. What surprised me was how confidently I had mistaken my interpretation for fact.
Apparently, I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did about what other people were thinking.
Their invitation didn’t fit the story I’d been telling myself. Reading a room, I was discovering, wasn’t the same as knowing what was happening inside the people in it.
I wondered what might happen if I let another person’s silence remain unexplained instead of turning it into proof that I wasn’t wanted.
Around that time, someone recommended Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. Its language of vulnerability gave shape to what I was experiencing. Showing up meant more than being physically present. That had never been particularly difficult for me.
In practice, showing up felt rather like Jesus asking me to walk out of a dressing room without any clothes on. Absurd as the image was, it captured the exposure of being seen without my familiar layers of competence and carefully managed responses.
Allowing someone to encounter my uncertainty, disagreement, disappointment, or need without first making those things more acceptable was frightening.
An opportunity to practice arose through an inner-healing prayer ministry at church. Because I had experience with similar prayer ministry, the team welcomed me to observe appointments and support those already serving.
As the weeks passed, frustration grew. The tools were familiar, but I missed the relational encounter with Jesus I had witnessed elsewhere, when people left with a deeper awareness of His presence and perspective. I longed for those receiving prayer at our church to experience that too.
Ordinarily, I might have kept observing or discussed my concerns with someone who agreed. This time I asked the team leader to meet me for coffee.
Even that decision offered a familiar kind of cover. Advocating for others felt safer than exposing something personal. My concern was sincere, but helping also gave me a reason to speak without admitting how vulnerable it felt to offer a perspective that might not be welcomed.
Apparently, even courage could arrive wearing the familiar clothing of usefulness.
Over coffee, I described what I’d witnessed in other prayer settings and why encountering Jesus personally mattered so much to me. Instead of watching her face for approval and adjusting every word, I found myself saying what I genuinely wanted to communicate, leaving her free to receive it as she would.
I couldn’t guarantee her agreement or prevent her disappointment. Yet I had stayed engaged without taking responsibility for the outcome.
The old instincts remained. I still read rooms and sometimes adjusted myself before realizing it. But occasionally I could recognize the impulse and wonder whether I needed to follow it.
I still didn’t know whether the woman I was allowing others to encounter would be welcomed. The possibility that she might not be frightened me.
Yet I was beginning to recognize the moment when I prepared to disappear.
What might it mean to remain present without quietly leaving myself behind?