It’s all too easy for me to hide. In fact, I don’t have to work at it or even seem like I’m hiding. 

I hide my hiding from everyone. Sometimes even myself. 

Stress, anger and other emotions can be hidden behind a smile. Whether it goes to the eyes or not, people want to believe and to take it as a happy acceptence of a situation, and so they do. Often. 

I’ve been learning not to hide so much. 

I have also been learning how I hide so much. I hide in the opinions of others, the voices around me saying what is right. It keeps me from risking my own voice to say the same, or something different, as the case may be. 

I hide in the rules and avoid risk by taking for granted the limitations of my position instead of believing in a God without limitations who uses whoever however he pleases. 

Willingly, I avoid the spotlight forgetting that just maybe I might be heading there or called there, or that I do enjoy the things it brings to my life. 

When I hide I forget that I am different and the same as other people. I have my words and they have theirs, but, in the midst of all the mumblings, just saying something can make a difference for just one person or at least cast a wedge between themselves and forced unfitted rules. 

Hiding behind my hair, hiding behind my seeming conformity to expectations, hiding in the group without being a real part of the group, hiding in the rules, hiding in expectations, hiding in power structures that don’t really apply. 

Sometimes I “forget” that I can make decisions for my own life and then I have to admit I might be hiding from the possibility of failure more than anything else. 

Because when I stop hiding I’m left in the light with only who I am and who God is to bolster me along the way. 

But the way is clearer when the hiding stops. 

When the structures shadowing our faces have been dismantled in our own understanding we can stand and face the world with strength. Structures and all.

No more hiding. 

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