Come Out of Hiding

credit: @jaycilivingston

We sat in the quiet restaurant off a side street in Paris. Despite being the dead of winter, the night was sticky. Maybe it was the slight ting of smog covering the city or the crowds causing the stick.

My friends and I tucked ourselves into the small restaurant Jayci had found online back when Paris was a thought and plane tickets were cheap. I giggled as I fumbled over my French and the waiter looked at me with not even the slightest amusement. Just another American girl pretending to be someone she’s not, I could hear him thinking.

We tucked our napkins in our laps, ordered overpriced drinks and looked around in eager expectation of the night. It was a moment in many ways we’d all been waiting for. Much effort, planning and saving had gone into the trip and just days before, I’d kind of spoiled it.

In a fit of frustration and rage, I had a meltdown. My friends did not pat my tears (not for lack of trying) or comfort me in muffled shhh’s. Instead I sobbed through a scolding hot shower and then began to tell the devil off for stealing my joy, cussing and banging the wall in front of me.

I had been miserable for the past seven days. Right before I left for this trip, I was invited to travel England with a group of missionaries called Circuit Riders. At first thought, I couldn’t believe the timing. I was already going to be in Europe! I could just hop off the plane on my layover in London and wait for my team to arrive. Everything seemed more perfect than I could have planned.

But the night after I made the decision, all the anxious thoughts flooded in.

You don’t even know these people. What if they hate you? What if you hate them? You don’t even like traveling with a group of four people, how are you supposed to travel with fifteen?

I slept maybe 10 hours collectively the three days leading up to departure. My mind seldom gave me rest and when it did, I was frantically selling belongings and packing up what was mine in a shoebox Charlotte apartment. The first time it hit me I wasn’t going home, I was 30,000 feet above The Atlantic, wedged between my friends in the middle seat.

I had poorly chosen to watch ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ on the flight over, a movie that can only be described as a cry fest mashup of ‘Marley and Me’ and ‘My Sister’s Keeper.’ Kind of like the beginning of ‘Up’ with no Paradise Falls at the end.

As my tears puddled on the folding tray, I tried to pretend the tears were for the movie, but we all knew I was crying because I realized what I’d done. I’d made a rather big decision in a matter of days and the adrenaline had finally worn off.

When we landed in Paris, I brushed it all off, determined to move forward. After we threw our bags down at our airbnb, we set off for the Eiffel Tower. It was New Year’s Day and the air was electric. Languages from all over the world could be heard on the street corner that night. Families with children in tow bought crepes on the sidewalks at midnight. Men in business suits took calls while hailing cabs. The Metro was down so the buses were packed floor to ceiling with people. As the doors shut, people on the sidewalks who didn't make the cut would hold those on the fringes of the bus inside, pulling out their hands just before the doors secured (or suffocated) the people inside.

I had made it. Paris, the city of love. Mine for a week…but I was miserable. And in my misery, I was making my friends miserable.

All my fears about the people I was about to meet, I plastered onto my closest friends. My thoughts began to morph into accusations against myself, making my friends the enemies silently slinging them at me. I brushed them off like dust I could blow up, but they kept coming. Mind you, my friends gave me no reason to think these things. But it didn’t matter.

One night Brielle came up to me in the supermarket.

‘What’s the deal? Why do you have such a hard time in groups?’

I winced as her words hit me. I wasn’t doing a very good job hiding my paranoia and frustration. Apparently it was written all over my face. I didn’t have words for her. All my fears of what would happen on tour were coming true with people who weren’t even strangers, they were my friends! I tried to articulate what I was feeling but all that came out was a shrug. I couldn’t even articulate reality to myself.

This was just before the shower meltdown. Before I lost my cool and unleashed all my pent up tension and anger in a flurry of words on my friend.

I had wanted it to be perfect. Before I walked into two months of absolute uncertainty, I wanted certainty for just a week. Certainty of how my friends felt about me. Certainty of how I felt about them. Certainty I was having a good time. Certainty that my place in this world was secure, at least in this small bubble of a moment.

So the second I began to feel uncertain, anger crept in unannounced.

The next morning, as we took the train out of Paris and I wept in the station next to my roommate, I found solace in Paul, the apostle’s words. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.* Boy, was that me. I do what I don’t want and I don’t do what I do want to do and I do and I don’t and I do.

I felt trapped in the body and mind of someone I didn’t want to be. I felt like a ten pound brick in the suitcases my friends were carrying. The trip had been my idea and now I was personally smearing mud all over it. The weight of it all made me feel ugly, exposed and broken.

I hate feeling broken. I hate feeling like the squeaky, rusty wheel on the cart. But rusty I felt.

When we got to Amsterdam and sat down to pancakes, I looked at my friends. I was so ashamed. I forced a soft sorry from my chest, knowing if I admitted how sorry I really was, I’d lose it right there in the pancake house.

One of them was honest and told me she wasn’t ready to forgive me yet. The others pretended it was fine, even though we all knew it was not. My shame lingered. I tried my best to get through the rest of the trip and push past it, but shame covered my mind like a blanket. The smog of Paris matched the smog in my brain as I mindlessly shuffled through the next seven days.

Why is sin so dirty feeling? It’s like the reminder that yes, the world is broken, but wait, we are part of the problem too! Sometimes as a Christian, I like to feel all shiny and soft. I start focusing on myself too much and the words of hymns talking about grace saving a wretch like me lose their punch.

But I am a sinner. When my eyes are off Jesus and they become fixed on myself, I try to find perfection in myself. I try to keep my image clean and my actions pure all the time and then soon enough, I fail. Again and again and again. Peace doesn’t come from believing I am perfect.

Peace comes from my eyes fixed on Jesus. I am a wretch, but he is the Savior! I am in deep trouble without his grace. I am a shame filled sinner alone. Until, until I ask Jesus to cover me. To be my portion, to be my prize. He is my vision. Not me standing in a crown in heaven from having lived a perfect life. There is no perfect life apart from the one he lived!

My vision is Jesus, reigning and ruling at the right hand of God. Me, just awestruck to sit at his feet. May that be my vision.

Life on the earth may play out like a million mini versions of the opening scene in ‘Up.’ Thank goodness I’m not aiming for a movie-like life. I’m aiming for Jesus; he is my vision. He is the pearl of great prize.

*Romans 7:15