Stop Hiding Who You Are

Have you all watched the show Joan of Arcadia? It ran for only two seasons in the early 2000s (the best era of all) and then was abruptly, and devastatingly, canceled. The concept is that God begins revealing himself to the main character, Joan, through different people in her life and asks her to do things that most of the time she really doesn’t want to do, but ultimately serve a greater purpose. Some days, Joan sees God as a wise elderly woman, other days a punk rock teenage boy (my personal favorite), and still others a fellow passenger on the bus.

I relate to Joan. She is a messy, imperfect, and sometimes foolish human who gets thrown curveball after curveball and tries as best as she can to navigate them well. I see myself in her when she throws tantrums, usually laced with witty insults, at God’s requests. And yet, despite her imperfections, God sees her and loves her and knows that she has a unique role to play in the world he has created. It’s a beautiful story that signals a beautiful truth about God’s character.

My parents own the DVD set, so every other Friday my sister comes over and the whole family sits down to watch it together. It’s impressive that 1) I’m choosing to re-watch a show that I know ends in a cliffhanger (it’s so worth it though), and 2) that everyone in the family is invested in the same show.

The other day, we were watching an episode where God asks Joan to join her high school yearbook. She’s pretty jazzed because she’s been struggling to find her “thing,” or the talent that makes her unique, and she feels like joining the yearbook will reveal that to her. So, she joins and gets assigned as a photographer. It turns out her pictures suck and she promptly gets fired. Discouraged, she wants to leave but then God shows up and encourages her to stick it out. She returns to the editor with her tail between her legs and asks for another job. He tells her she can be responsible for admin- and housekeeping-related tasks. Well, it turns out she’s pretty terrible at that too because she throws away the poetry submissions and has to sort through the garbage to find them. 

Meanwhile, she’s lying to her too-precious-for-words brand new boyfriend, Adam, by saying she’s a photographer for the yearbook and then a literary editor, not wanting to admit her defeat but instead wanting to seem cool and interesting, worthy of his affection. 

Finally, she meets God as a janitor and breaks down in the hallway saying that she thought this would help her find her thing, but instead she just keeps failing. He looks at her and lovingly tells her that she’s missing the point. Her thing isn’t that she’s super talented in one specific area, but rather that she tries things, and yes often fails, but is willing to take that step of faith to jump into something new. And then, pointedly, he says, “Stop hiding who you are.”

It is that proclamation that prompts her to come clean to Adam about the whole ordeal and confess that she isn’t some impressive yearbook contributor, but rather a flawed human just doing her best to try new things and care for others along the way. Then, sweet baby Adam graciously responds with, “That’s what I love about you, Jane (Jane being his term of endearment for her)”. 

Stop hiding who you are. That’s what I love about you.

I needed to hear those things. I needed to feel those things. I needed to trust them to be true. It’s funny how God can use something as trivial as TV to cut straight to your core. 

I walk an interesting tension in life between confidence and insecurity. I couldn’t recognize my own insecurities for a long time because they don’t look the same as those of my peers on the surface. I’ve always been a little (or a lot) different than those around me but have never been willing to compromise myself or my convictions for popularity or approval. I care about what other people think of me but am rarely limited by it. I have insecurities about my body (plenty of them) but can generally recognize when I’m believing a lie. Because of this, I’ve often served as the voice of reason, so to speak, among my social circles. In fact, I distinctly remember one friend writing in my senior yearbook that I was “quite possibly the most together person” that they knew. If only they knew.

I believe that this orientation towards life has spared me from a lot of heartache and for that, I am deeply appreciative. However, this doesn’t capture the whole story. I can be confident, certainly. I can be secure. I’d even venture to say that I have been both of those things far more often than I haven’t been. However, I can also be deeply self-critical, occasionally bordering on self-loathing, and painfully insecure. I have spent more time feeling trapped by the thought patterns of the latter as of late.  

I went to a therapist named Susan for a few years during my late high school/early college years. She was lovely and I miss her dearly. I remember sitting on her couch one day talking about my anxiety and the pressure that I put on myself in all circumstances (I mean, all). When I paused, she made eye contact with me and asked, “Abbey, what standard are you holding yourself to?”

I was dumbfounded. I had never been asked that question before and I didn’t know how to respond. I took a moment, thought about it, and responded as honestly as I possibly could: “Perfection.” Saying it out loud felt like a revelation.

Because my standard is, and always has been, perfection, I am always falling short. Because I am always falling short, I perceive myself to be always failing at all things. There are certain facets of my life where this shows up more (work, family dynamics, personal achievements) or less (hobbies, caring for others) but the sentiment is persistent. When I’m in a healthy place, I have tools that I can implement to mitigate the self-critique and quiet the voices in my head. When I’m not, they grow louder and meaner and feel truer. 

There’s a distinction between how I interpret perfection and how others might. I hear a lot of people who say, “Oh, I’m such a perfectionist,” which typically means that the materials they produce must be perfect. In school, this looked like acing a test or putting together engaging presentations. Professionally, it may look like writing concise and intriguing grant proposals. Don’t get me wrong, I totally struggle with this kind of perfectionism too – it’s part of the reason why school always felt so safe to me because I knew I could execute. But the perfectionism that I’m talking about, the one that impacts me most significantly, is character-based perfection. I feel like I must be everything for everyone, including myself, always and that is exhausting. I want to be a perfect human, not just produce perfect things. 

My love for perfection, or at least the idea of it, makes me hate vulnerability. Vulnerability exposes the truths I’d rather keep hidden, whereas the veil of perfection should keep me safe... right? The reality is that it keeps me isolated, afraid, exhausted, and heavily burdened. I hide who I am because I’m afraid that if I show people the truth, they won’t love me. It’s funny that the thing that feels safest (perfection) is the thing that brings the most suffering and the thing that feels the most dangerous (vulnerability) brings the most freedom.

My life has been defined by empathy. It’s kind of my thing. I have always lived and moved between worlds which has allowed me to know and love and relate to a lot of different people with a lot of different, and frequently conflicting, life experiences. I’ve also dealt with many challenges in my own life that have given me insight into the perspectives of others. 

For example, I know what it’s like to come from a divorced family. I also know what it’s like to have parents who’ve been married for over 30 years. I know how it feels to grow up white in America. I also know how it feels to come from a mixed-race family with a complicated and painful racial history. I have suffered from an incurable autoimmune disease for most of my life. I have also been a healthy young person for most of my life. I have close friends and family members who fall on completely opposite sides of any social, political, or religious spectrum, and a whole lot of folks hanging out somewhere in the middle.

Those are just a few examples, but the point is that God has given me both personality traits and life experiences that allow me to empathize well with others. I believe that part of the purpose of that gift is to share my story and elevate the stories of others to make people in my world feel more seen, safe, and open-hearted towards others and to give them permission to stop hiding who they are and to know that they are loved. 

The challenging part is that I don’t always apply this same compassion and empathy towards myself, but I digress. Because I hate vulnerability but love freedom and believe that sharing pieces of my story can be a conduit to freedom in my life and maybe yours too, I’m about to get really vulnerable with you all. I’m scared, truly. 

Full transparency: I’m lying on the couch in my bedroom right now throwing a full internal tantrum to myself after writing that last sentence and before I write what you’re about to read. I might as well have “Naked” by James Arthur playing in the background because that’s how this feels... There’s some insight into my writing process for you :) 

Hi, let me introduce myself. My name is Abbey Kate Martin. I love my middle name and I would absolutely go by “Abbey Kate” if I lived in the South. I am many things – a disciple, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an ambitious career woman, a lover of spontaneity and newness. I love hard and thoroughly. I’m loyal to my people and I take care of them. I believe in Jesus and long to know him more deeply. I’m pretty dang funny and love love love to laugh and have fun and make others do the same. Spreading joy is almost certainly my favorite thing to do on planet earth. I am bold and creative and find energy on stage or in front of a camera. In fact, my biggest regret in life (ok, that’s dramatic but so am I) is that I didn’t pursue a child acting career. 

I am a pop culture encyclopedia with a diverse musical library who loves a good dance party. I set personal and professional goals and, largely, I achieve them. I believe in dreaming big because I’ve seen firsthand that big dreams can come true. I opt to connect and experience the world through the eyes of others rather than fall into tourist traps. I have a talent for finding the best restaurants in town and a special place in my heart for any chef that was on Food Network in the early/mid-2000s. I believe in natural beauty and, even if I didn’t, am far too low maintenance with my appearance to ever wear makeup on a consistent basis or grow my hair out again. 

But of those many things, I am also an unattached 25-year-old woman who lives at home, shares a car with her family and fails to contribute to household responsibilities as much as she’d like. I often feel like I’ve wasted time or that I’m pathetic and passive. There are so many things that I want to do that I haven’t done yet and, some days, I worry that I’ve already missed my window to do them. 

I’ve never kissed anyone, never had a guy notably express interest in me, and have never really been called beautiful except by maybe a family member here or there. I am simultaneously an easygoing, adventurous free spirit and a high-maintenance control freak. I love to travel and explore, but these days spend most of my free time curled up in a ball on my couch watching YouTube with tears unpredictably stinging my eyes. I am fundamentally a clean and organized person but have lately neglected my spaces, littering them with laundry, papers, and old dishes. My fitness, nutrition, and general self-care practices have been notably impeded by the events of the past couple of years. I know how awesome I am. I also know how flawed I am. 

It’s easy (and natural) for me to be kind and optimistic with friends and co-workers, but immensely difficult for me to maintain that same disposition with those closest to me. I’m frequently sharp, cynical, untrusting, and defensive. Sometimes, my thoughts get dark. I bury resentments in shallow graves just beneath the surface of my skin ready to resurrect whenever I get hurt or things don’t go my way. I advocate for self-acceptance and rejecting the pressure of comparison and yet I spend so many of my days comparing myself to others and, perhaps most significantly, to previous versions of myself. 

I project the idea that I’m capable and productive, but only I know how many mindless online content rabbit holes I’ve gone down over the past couple of years that have been life-eroding rather than life-giving... how many moments I should have been working that I was reading celebrity articles or watching TikTok compilations. I’ve chosen distractions over presence and over time with my Creator over and over and over and over and over and over again. I’m ashamed, to be honest, about how much time I’ve spent on damaging and meaningless things.

I worry that I won’t find my Adam – the one who can love me well and fully. I worry that I’m just too different, too other, too imperfect for people to choose me. I’m worried that I’m “the difficult one” in my family and that I’ll burden others with my complexities. I’m afraid that I’ve squandered my life or that I’m perpetually tied to my current circumstances. I’m afraid that my ambition will go to waste. I’m afraid of failure – not the kind that others see on the surface, but the kind that is much more personal and internal... the failing of being who I know I can be, who I know I was made to be. 

I’m a loyal viewer of The Bachelor franchise and remember, several years ago, watching my main squeeze Ben Higgins share with The Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe, that he felt unlovable. At the time I thought this was ridiculous for two reasons: 1) humans are meant to love and for love so his very human-ness prevented him from being unlovable; and 2) he was quite literally the whole package – intelligent, kind, charming, AND gorgeous – how could he doubt his own lovability? But, in time, I’ve been able to resonate with this insecurity much more than I did initially. I wish the concept still felt foreign to me, but it doesn’t. I think I’m afraid that I’m unlovable too. 

There it is friends. I came out of hiding for a moment and now my cheeks are flushed from the exposure. Do you still love me? 

Now, there’s something important that I need to share with you. Remember when I said earlier that I generally know when I’m believing a lie? That’s still true. I know that the loudest voices in my head these days are often lying to me, and I know that I need to seek truth over the lies. I’m working on it. So, as you read and digest my words, please feel free to encourage but do so with the knowledge that this is not a cry for help but rather an honest account of where I’m at in this moment. I hope that maybe if you need it, you can see yourself in my words too and feel less alone.

There’s no clear point to this story, but I think it’s important to be honest and to normalize insecurity and the struggles that so many of us face. If we can’t be honest about it, we can’t heal from it. There’s a reason why I was scared to share all of this with you. In part, it’s because I haven’t even shared it with myself. But talking out loud helps, writing it down helps, and doing that in community with others, well, helps. All of this is a reminder to me that I am already loved exactly as I am and that others in my present and future do/will love me exactly as I am. 

Stop hiding who you are. That’s what I love about you. 

I love you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being. Talk soon, okay? 

Xoxo, 

Abbey