Being The Light You Can’t Hide

The restaurant offers free dance lessons Tuesday nights in exchange for buying something from the menu. I’ve been trying to integrate more active hobbies into my weekly routine: less sitting in coffee shops with my Bible, more movement that requires my body to participate in whatever my soul is processing. Dancing seemed like reasonable compromise between the contemplative practice I crave and the physical activity I need.

I arrived early, claimed a corner table as far from the main floor as the layout allowed, and opened my Bible while waiting for the lesson to start. The place was filling with couples. Mostly first dates based on the particular quality of their conversation, that careful navigation between interest and guardedness, the way they leaned in but kept their arms crossed.

It wasn’t long before I felt eyes on me.

Four, maybe five tables. I could feel the attention before I could see it, the weight of being observed when you’re trying to be invisible. The first few times this happened at coffee shops, at restaurants, and at any public space where I tried to carve out solitude. I chalked it up to men being opportunistic, seeing a woman alone and interpreting her presence as invitation. The Bible probably added novelty value. Young woman reading scripture in a bar that serves dance lessons isn’t exactly common demographic.

But after a dozen or so encounters like this, the pattern became too consistent to dismiss as coincidence or male attention-seeking. Because what happened next was always the same.

When the lesson started and I moved to the dance floor, the looks intensified. Not because I’m a good dancer. I’m decidedly not, still counting beats and occasionally stepping on partners’ feet…. but because of something else I wasn’t doing intentionally and couldn’t control even when I noticed it happening.

By the end of the night, at least seven different people had approached me to say variations of the same thing:

• “You emit this joy that overtakes everything else on the floor.”
• “You’re such a bright light that people can’t help but stare.”
• “You have this passion that shows in every small thing you do….it’s energizing just watching you.”
• “You attract everyone in the room even when you’re trying to hide.”
• “You’re so different from everyone else here. I could see your light from across the room.”

I don’t know what to do with this. With being told repeatedly that I radiate something I’m not consciously producing, that draws attention I don’t want, that makes me visible when I’m actively trying to be unnoticed.

I’ve had the same dream since I was saved.

Not every night, but pretty darn close. Often enough that I’ve stopped being surprised when it shows up again.

In the dream, I have wings. I’m the only one who does. And I’m constantly looking for somewhere isolated to practice flying, somewhere no one will see me, somewhere I can figure out how this works without an audience. The moment someone sees me is when I wake up. Every time. Just as I’m spotted, just as someone notices the wings, the dream ends and I’m back in my bed with my heart racing and this overwhelming sense of having been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.

I never understood what the dream meant until this year.

Until the pattern of strangers approaching me to say I’m a light they can’t stop watching became too consistent to ignore. Until I realized that the wings in my dream and the light people keep describing are the same thing. Something about me that’s visible to others even when I can’t see it myself, something that makes hiding impossible no matter how hard I try.

The wings are my light on the hill. And I’ve been spending years trying to find places where no one will notice them, where I can practice being myself without the weight of being seen.

But you can’t hide light. Jesus was pretty clear about that (Matthew 5:14-16). A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. You don’t light a lamp and put it under a basket. The whole point of light is that it illuminates, that it’s visible, that it draws attention whether you want it to or not.

But also: Its exhausting to be watched.

I’m talking about the focused attention of people who have decided you’re worth studying who are looking for something in you that they’re missing in themselves.

• Some of them want to understand what makes you different so they can replicate it.
• Some want to be close to you hoping whatever you have is contagious.
• Some just want to consume what you’re radiating without any intention of reciprocating or even acknowledging the cost to you of producing it.
• And some want to put you on a pedestal. To make you into something more than human, to project onto you qualities you don’t possess, to turn you into answer to questions you’re not equipped to solve.

This is the danger of being a light on a hill.

People start looking to you instead of to the source of the light. They want you to be their light rather than a reflection of the Light. They treat proximity to you as sufficient rather than as pointer toward something beyond you.

I’ve watched this happen. Watched people get attached to my presence in their lives, start depending on my energy or joy or whatever it is they’re perceiving, then feel betrayed when I’m not available or when I have bad days or when I fail to be the constant source of illumination they’ve decided they need.

The idolatry is subtle. They don’t worship me exactly. But they do look to me for things only God should provide: hope, energy, purpose, direction. And when I inevitably fail to be God for them, they’re disappointed in ways that reveal they’d been expecting something I was never meant to deliver.

This makes me want to hide more, not less.

Makes me want to order groceries for delivery instead of going to the store, to stay home instead of going to dance lessons, to avoid any situation where my presence might create expectations I can’t meet or dependencies I can’t sustain.

But hiding is its own kind of disobedience. Jesus said not to put your lamp under a basket (Matthew 5:15). The command isn’t about self-promotion or visibility for its own sake. It’s about stewardship of whatever light you’ve been given, about not wasting God’s gifts through fear of what might happen if people see them.
The parable of the talents comes to mind (Matthew 25:14-30). The servant who buried his talent in the ground didn’t do it out of malice or laziness. He did it out of fear. Fear of his master, fear of failure, fear of risk. And he was condemned not for failing to multiply what he’d been given but for refusing to even try, for choosing safety over stewardship.

Staying home feels like safety. No one can idolize you if they never see you. No one can drain you if they can’t access you. No one can project expectations onto you if you’re not available for them to observe. But it’s also burying the talent. Taking whatever light God has given me and deliberately hiding it, not because visibility would harm others but because it’s uncomfortable for me. Because being seen requires vulnerability I’d rather avoid. Because having people respond to the light means dealing with their responses, which are often messy and sometimes inappropriate and occasionally destructive.

The tension is this: I know I’m supposed to let my light shine. I know hiding it is waste of whatever gift God has given. But I also know that being visible creates problems I don’t know how to manage, attracts attention that feels more like burden than opportunity, generates expectations I can’t meet without destroying myself.

I didn’t ask to be a light on a hill.

I didn’t pray for visibility or influence or whatever quality it is that makes strangers approach me to say I’m radiating joy they can feel across a room.
I asked to be hidden in the box in the alley with just me and God. I asked for obscurity, for the freedom to exist without audience, for relationships that don’t require me to be constantly “on” or to maintain whatever shine people have decided they need from me.

But apparently that’s not the calling I’ve been given. The calling I’ve been given involves wings I can’t hide and light that’s visible whether I like it or not and this constant pull between stewardship and self-protection. Paul wrote about being poured out like a drink offering (Philippians 2:17, 2 Timothy 4:6). The image is total expenditure: liquid poured out until the container is empty, life given fully in service of something beyond self-preservation.

This terrifies me. Because I’ve experienced what it’s like to be poured out, to give until empty, to serve until exhausted. And I’ve learned that most people will take what you pour without ever asking if you have anything left, without ever considering whether their consumption of your light is sustainable for you.
So the question becomes: how do you steward the gift of being a light without allowing people to drain you dry? How do you shine without burning out? How do you let people see the light without letting them turn you into their personal source of illumination?

I’m still figuring this out.

Some of it is boundaries. Recognizing that just because people want access to my light doesn’t mean I owe them unlimited availability. That saying no to opportunities to shine is sometimes necessary for maintaining capacity to shine at all.

Some of it is discernment. Learning to distinguish between people who want to consume my light and people who want to follow it back to the source. Between those who are looking to me and those who are looking through me to God.

Some of it is accepting that this is the calling. That fighting against being visible is fighting against how God made me, that trying to hide the light is refusing to steward the gift, that the wings in my dream aren’t burden but capacity for something I haven’t fully embraced yet.

Jesus said “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). The point of the light isn’t to draw attention to yourself but to point others toward God. The light is meant to illuminate the path to the source, not to become the destination itself.
Maybe that’s the key. Being visible without being the point. Radiating light without claiming ownership of it. Letting people see the joy and the passion and whatever else they’re perceiving, while being clear that what they’re seeing is reflection rather than origin.

This requires more confidence than I currently possess. Confidence that God will sustain the light, that I don’t have to generate it through my own effort, that shining doesn’t require me to burn myself out as fuel.
It also requires trust that God knows what He’s doing in giving me this particular calling. That being a light on a hill serves purposes I can’t see, produces fruit I won’t necessarily witness, matters in ways that won’t be clear until much later.

I keep going back to the dance lessons.

Keep showing up at the corner table with my Bible. Keep moving to the floor when the lesson starts despite knowing that people will watch, will approach, will tell me I’m radiating something they can’t stop noticing. I don’t know if this is obedience or just stubbornness. Refusing to let fear of visibility keep me from activities I enjoy, refusing to bury the talent just because stewardship feels complicated. Maybe it’s both. Maybe obedience often looks like stubbornness—doing the thing you’re called to do even when it’s uncomfortable, even when people’s responses create problems you don’t know how to solve, even when hiding would be so much easier.

In my dream I keep trying to take flight. And I keep waking up the moment someone sees my wings, the moment the hiding becomes impossible.
Maybe it’s time to stop trying to hide. Not because I’ve figured out how to manage the attention or because I’ve learned to keep my cup perpetually full or because visibility has stopped being uncomfortable.
But because the light is there whether I acknowledge it or not. The wings exist whether I use them or not. And burying them, hiding them, pretending they don’t exist—that’s not humility. That’s just fear dressed up in theological language.

So I’ll keep going to the dance lessons. Keep sitting in the corner with my Bible. Keep moving to the floor despite knowing people will watch. Keep stewarding whatever light God has given me even when stewardship feels more like burden than gift. And maybe, eventually, I’ll learn to fly with the wings I keep trying to hide. Learn to let the light shine without burning out. Learn to be visible without letting visibility consume me.

Or maybe I’ll just keep waking up right when someone sees me, night after night, until I finally understand what the dream has been trying to tell me all along:
The hiding is the problem. The light is the gift. And it’s time to stop confusing the two.