I've done a lot of hiding in my life, but maybe not the kind of hiding you might think. I'm not a fugitive hiding from the law or a runaway hiding from my troubles. I didn't spend high school hiding boyfriends from my parents or pot under my pillow. I've never had a secret abortion, an affair with a married man, or been drunk, high, or put in jail.

My hiding was so clever that I had everyone fooled, including myself. The masks I chose to hide behind were not obviously offensive. In so many ways, the life of this good girl mirrors that of the party guests at a masquerade ball. My masks were nice. They were lovely. They were bubbly and likeable and attractive. They were the masks of a good girl. Yet, I hid behind them.

We live and breathe and move on this terrestrial masquerade ball, longing to display the prettied up, exaggerated version of ourselves to everyone else. Behind my pretty masks, I was a worried, anxious wreck of a girl. I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders, as well as that of Mars, the moon, and half of Jupiter. Although I had accepted Jesus at age seven, I didn't know what it meant to walk with him. I spent most of my time stumbling behind him, just trying to catch up. Though my relationship with Jesus was very real and full of true faith, it was often too structured and boxed in. I really trusted him. I really prayed and knew he was with me. I was a genuine believer. I struggled in my faith, but I didn't have a compartment for that. I glazed over verses that didn't make sense and highlighted the ones that felt good.

God didn't seem big enough to handle contradictions, neither the ones I saw in the world nor the ones I felt in my heart. I thought life with Jesus meant trying to become who he wanted me to be, but it always felt like something was missing.

I felt as if an invisible good girl was following me around wherever I went, showing up without permission to shame and blame and scold. She was omnipresent, like a pretty little goddess in a pink, shadowy corner. She embodied the good girl version of my current life stage and shamed me accordingly: good student, good leader, good wife, and good mom.

She represented the girl I wanted to be but could never live up to. I constantly worried that my imperfect status would be discovered. I often experienced guilt but didn't know why. I felt the heavy weight of impossible expectations and had the insatiable desire to explain every mistake. My battle with shame was constant and hovering.

Instead of recognizing my own inadequacy as an opportunity to trust God, I hid those parts and adopted a bootstrap religion. I focused on the things I could handle, the things I excelled in, my disciplined life, and my unshakeable good mood.

These masks became so natural to me that I didn't even know they were masks. I thought they were just part of my face. I moved through life hiding behind the good and lived out the mess in secret. I taught people around me that I had no needs and then was secretly angry with them for believing me.

Somewhere along the way, I got the message that salvation is by faith alone but anything after that is faith plus my hard work and sweet disposition. I lived most of my life under a system I designed for myself and I labeled it The Gospel. As a good girl, every choice I made was dictated by a theology of self-sufficiency. Life was up to me, and I was prepared to get it right.

And then Jesus.

There isn't any other way to say it. Jesus makes it safe to walk out from under that system. We have a God who sees and cares and notices. He will not come undone. He remains un-overwhelmable.

The words in this book will paint the portrait of a good girl in hiding. Perhaps you will recognize your own masks, the ones you have worked on for years to carefully craft and design and perfect. Rest assured that paper face is not really yours. Behind the mask, you are just a woman who longs to believe that Jesus makes a difference, but you have had difficulty collecting the evidence of it in your own life. The true gospel really is good news. For you. Right now.

The cross gives us permission to sit down on the inside because we have a God who knows what he's doing. Allow him to look beyond the girl-made hiding places you have so carefully constructed. I know it goes against all the words the world says are admirable: self-reliant, capable, strong, and resilient. But I am in desperate need of a source outside of myself all the time. And so are you.

I believe women need to talk about the ways we hide, the longing to be known, the fear in the knowing. Beyond that, I believe in the life-giving power of story, in the beauty of vulnerability, and in the strength that is found in weakness. In order to explore the truth, we have to put words and images on those ingrained beliefs we have about God and what he expects of us. We have to expose the invisible expectations and desires we know are there but may not have words for yet. Let me give you the words. Let me offer my stories and the stories of women close to me. Perhaps they are your stories as well.