By Kelsey Klepper
I used to feel like my life was a game of hide and don’t let anyone seek. I used to feel that if someone was seeking, my weaknesses and lack of having it all together would be exposed. I think a lot of us can relate to the fear of exposure in one or more areas of our lives. It seems normal for most of us to put on a front for even our closest friends and family. Someone asks, “how are you?” and our response is “good” or “doing well.” Why would we actually want to admit that we feel anything less when it seems frowned upon by society?
During the majority of my college years, I was hiding a lot of behaviors and emotions that didn’t seem to fit into the mold of a nutrition student. I thought people would think I was a fraud. I thought I could never be a dietitian if my eating, exercise behaviors, and body weren’t all ideal. I never hid the fact that I was dieting or restricting because that was normal to society, my friends, classmates, and family. It was normal to go to the gym every day. It was normal to be obsessed about what I ate and keep a food log. It was normal to eat strict during the week and have ‘cheat days’ on the weekends.
I had to hide what diet culture didn’t find normal. I was hiding my bingeing. I was hiding the guilt of not exercising long enough or hard enough. I was hiding a lot of shame and frustration about my body. I was hiding sadness. I was trapped in a place where most of my behaviors looked normal, but on the inside I was drowning.
I know now that I was playing the hide and don’t let anyone seek game with the enemy. He wants us to stay in the dark, and I did for several years. He made me believe that staying isolated was better than admitting that I was struggling. It took a small step but a big choice for the game to end. The game was so much harder for the enemy to play when I stopped hiding.
Not hiding means exposure. Exposure means going from the darkness to the light. Exposure also means choosing to let God in and let healing begin.
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light” (Ephesians 5:8-13).
Of course exposure felt scary. And going from the darkness to the light is going to look different for everyone. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone close to me, but I was ready to talk. I joined a new small group of Christian women around that same time, and they were the ones I first told. It felt like the safest place for me at the time. It was months later that I told my boyfriend of 6 years, now husband about my struggle.
Being in the light didn’t cure my behaviors. They were still there, but they didn’t have the grip on my life like they did when I was hiding. I truly knew God had a different path for me. The enemy is always going to try and find ways to sneak in, but the more I continue to step into the light, the less opportunity the enemy has to shackle me to my fears and struggles.
I love worship music, and if that’s your jam too (or even if it isn’t), please listen to “Out of Hiding” by Steffany Gretzinger.
