Hiding Out

I guess it was Kristina's 8th grade year. She was still going through her awkward phase and she was just learning what the term "girl drama" really meant. She was going through a place in her life where she was learning who to trust, who not to trust, she was becoming more mature but still wanting to be a kid and just going through your general transition from tween to actual teen.

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Kristina has always been a walking I-pod. She will randomly break out in song and dance anywhere at anytime. Walking through Wal-Mart, in the car, walking into a business office, just wherever. If a song hits her she goes with it. It is sort of entertaining to watch her. At 16 years old she is not embarrassed of this "talent" (and I say that loosely...haha) but at 13 or 14 years old she was all but humiliated to allow anyone to see this side of her.

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She was in class and the song hit her. I don't know all the words of it even though I have heard it about a million times but there is a part in the song that says "I'll keep you my dirty little secret." As she sat in class it took everything she had to be still. She just wanted to jump up, burst out into song and dance but she knew she couldn't. She raised her hand and asked the teacher if she could go to the restroom. As she walked down the hall she said she almost ran because she knew at any moment she would start singing and dancing in the hallway.

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As she rounded the corner into the girl's bathroom she carefully looked under each stall to make sure no one was in there. At first she was dancing around and singing under her breath but the more she got into it the louder she sang. She said that she ended up cupping her hand as if she were holding a microphone and began singing and dancing in front of the mirrors as if she were on stage.

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About that time she saw a hand start waving around the concrete partition that blocked off the doorway to the bathroom and the actual stalls. She stopped in mid-song and dance and said that it was if the breath had been knocked out of her when she heard "Ummmm, I just wanted to let you know that we can hear you out here in the hallway so it ain't a dirty little secret anymore!"

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She said that she mustered up the strength to say "Okay" but it sounded like a mouse gasping for air. She waited for a few minutes so that whoever "we" were would have plenty of time to go back to class and no one would know that it was her in the bathroom singing. She said after a good five minutes had passed she crept out of the bathroom looking left to right and saw no one so she headed on out the door. As she walked further into the hallway that's when she saw them. It was every single "popular" boy in the school. She said her face turned so red that she could feel her skin stinging when about that time they all started singing "I'll keep you my dirty little secret....dirty little secret!" She said that she dropped her head, ran through the line of boys who were now serenading her and collapsed back into her seat in class.

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As she told me the story that afternoon I was laughing so hard I could not breathe! To this day if she tells the story I can't help myself because I just can see her in this bathroom singing and dancing and just being, well, Kristina. She is an odd little bird but that is what makes her Kristina and I can't imagine her being any other way. To this day, this group of boys will break out into song when they see her just to pick at her and now that she has come into her own and isn't embarrassed by this "talent" she has she will stop, play air guitar and sing right along with them.

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You know alot of times we are just like that? We run and hide in the bathroom to pray because we are embarrassed of what someone might think of us. Jesus said "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." Mark 8:38. There is no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed of our Heavenly Father or the fact that we go to him in prayer or read his word. Imagine where we would be today if Jesus was ashamed or embarrassed to hang on that cross in front of all of those people for us?