Mount Shame

Sooo… I definitely haven’t always been an open book. At age 23 in a weekly counseling session my homework was to go home and watch the movie Frozen & psychologically evaluate it because apparently I’m Elsa, or at least that’s what Mary had told me. (love ya, Mary). Ya know, the whole ”conceal don’t feel, put on a show?” Yeah that was me, she was undeniably correct, but I didn’t exactly have ice powers necessarily, but instead I just concealed all my emotions and hid my entire life and everything I’ve ever known about myself. 

Mary also asked, “who would you be if you actually took your mask off?”

I legitimately couldn’t answer that question. I was too afraid. I seriously didn’t know, and I was shocked. 

I mean now I’ve gotten used to telling people about my life even though I was a locked box for 24 years. But now? Oh, now I can’t shut up… Unless the enemy convinces me to pull out my defiant side. Which does happen more often than I care to admit, and it unfortunately happened the other day. 

Coming into the World Race in the beginning of October my squad LOVED me from the get go. I was real, I was funny, and apparently full of joy, but that’s all they knew about me… and the enemy sure wanted to keep it that way. 

So then comes testimony time with my team. We were three weeks in at this point and they only know surface level Kristin. And for sure the enemy wanted to keep it that way. 

I basically refused to tell them, just not out loud. I told my friend Paiton who’s on another team that I was going to refuse and to that she replied, “why Kristin, that will just hinder your growth.“ And to which I replied with a big OOF. 

So then prayer time came along. The instructions were to pray and listen to the Lord and see what He had for you.

During that time He had mentioned to me that I was in fact going to share my testimony, and that it was going to be that night. 

It wasn’t even the fact that I had to tell it. It’s the fact that I had to relive it, and I didn’t know how my brain and the enemy were going to respond to sharing it.

So when I shared what the Lord had given to me, our leader responded with the fact that she had just prayed for us and she has words from what Jesus had told her during that time. 

”For you, Kristin, Jesus said, “Kristin is facing a mountain that she cannot climb without me.”

& I again replied with another big OOF. 

So that night Jesus and I packed our baggage, and hiked up that mountain of shame together where at the top my team met me with grace, mercy, and a lot of chocolate. 

Vulnerability is hard. Letting people in on your inner most struggles is taxing, but it’s also freeing, especially when you and Jesus do it together.