“Emily Christiansen, go sit in the take-a-break chair.”
My heart pounded in my tiny chest.
I had been twisted around in my seat, talking to my friends in the back of the classroom. But I watched their faces turn from laughter to fear as they gazed at the figure creeping up behind me.
I turned to face my fourth grade teacher. She was big, red and terrifying. I felt like Amanda Thripp in “Matilda,” standing in front of Miss Trunchbull, moments away from getting launched over a fence by the two blonde braids in my hair.
My crime: one too many Harry Potter impressions. Blimey, it wasn’t my fault they were becoming a favorite with my mates.
I rose from my table and tip-toed towards the darkest corner in the classroom. The big, fat troublemaker chair sat waiting for me. 20 pairs of eyes followed.
A room full of squirmy 10-year-olds, but not a whisper to be heard. Only the squeaks from my Twinkle Toe shoes dragging across the tile floor.
The teacher carried on her lesson as I listened from the corner. My face grew hot, and tears began to spill over my cheeks.
I was embarrassed, and it ached in my gut.
So I vowed to avoid that humiliating feeling for the rest of my life.
No more Hermione impressions or making my friends laugh in class. I’d be a silent, straight-A student from this moment onwards!
Until the rules of life mutated between 4th and 12th grade. Being the last girl on the soccer team to get my first kiss meant I was uncool, while sneaking out and skipping class earned me respect.
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“Don’t try to make a move on Chrissy, she’s too Christian and she’s waiting ‘til marriage.”
I whipped my head around to the front of the hotel lobby.
It was my senior spring break trip to Cancun, Mexico. My friends stood in their platform wedge sandals, surrounding the boy from Akron, Ohio who’d just asked me to walk along the beach with him. The girls turned to each other and giggled. He threw his head back and laughed.
That feeling from fourth grade had returned, only this time it stung deeper. I wasn’t getting singled out for my behavior but for being who I was: A follower of Christ.
And I couldn’t sink into the take-a-break chair and cry about it this time.
So I teetered over to their circle, tugging down at the hem of my dress and wishing I’d brought a sweatshirt I could zip up and hide under. I gave a half-hearted chuckle to announce I wasn’t offended, but the abrupt silence and my friends’ quick glances at each other meant I wasn’t supposed to overhear my personhood being used as comedic relief.
At that moment, I decided to scrap my original “prudish” approach to avoid social humiliation and start wearing my heart under my sleeve. No more “I can’t go out tonight, I have church in the morning” or queueing Toby Mac and Kirk Franklin when given aux in the car with friends. I was gonna fly under the radar and ride the wave to social acceptance, praying (but never out loud) that I wouldn’t have to stand in the spotlight of public embarrassment ever again.
I rode that wave for the remainder of senior year until I washed up at the shore of Grand Canyon University (GCU) in the fall of 2023. If you had told fourth-grade me with her Bethel University T-shirts, hoodies and blue-and-gold-colored beaded necklaces that I’d end up cheering for a Lope instead of a Royal, she would scream (in a British accent), “Not a chance, mate!”
At the time, it seemed like the perfect institution to grow my faith and still get the stereotypical “college experience.” I felt ready to reintroduce myself as someone cooler than just a Christian.
I’m sure you can guess how that turned out, since I’m writing this for the Bethel Clarion and not GCU News.
But the strangest part of my experience was that a campus with over 25,800 students didn’t make me feel less embarrassed. Instead, that spotlight followed me everywhere. It burned like the 115º heat on move-in day as I sat in the backseat of a rented minivan pulled up outside Chaparral Hall, waiting for an eager mob of cheering welcome weekers to tell me how excited they were that God had brought me to GCU.
That spotlight followed me down my morning elevator rides to the lobby, waiting for someone to break the silence, pressing buttons to random floors hoping someone loud and friendly would walk in and decide that I’m worth talking to. It followed me into my Christian Worldview class where I lowered my head and dragged my feet to the back row, waiting for my professor to squint through his bifocal glasses and notice my hand raised amongst 200 others in the lecture hall. And it followed me back up the elevator and into my dorm room as I scrolled through photos my twin brother had posted of his first few weeks at Bethel, waiting for the day I’d be surrounded with smiley friends like his, looking as grateful and content as he did.
It was being unknown, unvalued and unimportant that left me feeling more exposed than ever.
So in January of 2024, I tried to escape that spotlight by moving back to Minnesota and into Getsch Hall at Bethel University.
And since then the light has dimmed, and I thank God everyday for how positively different my experience has been here so far. I’ve formed life-long friendships, discovered my passion for writing and journalism and continued to grow in my walk with Christ. But I have to admit, the initial transition wasn’t easy.
Growing up in the public school system, I never questioned the strength of my faith because there wasn’t anyone around me to compare it to. I was “Chrissy the Christian,” but it only meant that I attended the occasional Sunday Eagle Brook Church service, prayed quietly to myself before falling asleep at sleepovers and felt a lot more guilty than others for indulging in high school party culture.
My family hopped around from one church to the other, and year-round club soccer made church events impossible to keep up with. I never went to Sunday school or belonged to a youth group, and I’ve never understood a VeggieTales reference. So a few weeks after transferring schools, I quickly realized that my faith was “lukewarm” compared to the rest of my Bethel peers who seemed to skip through campus on fire for Christ.
And once again, embarrassment crept back into my life.
Like the time freshman year when someone asked me what my favorite book of the Bible was, and having read very little Scripture in my life, I responded, “the one with Joseph’s coat.” Or my first time at Vespers huddled in a prayer circle with girls I’d just met, forgetting who we were praying for and having no idea what to say when it was my turn to contribute. Or this past fall when I was the only one in my Christian Theology class to raise my hand when asked who believed if non-Christians can get into heaven, and the professor decided to pull me up to the front of the classroom so I could share more of my unpopular beliefs with my classmates.
But even when I say something stupid or make a fool of myself in front of others, I no longer get that aching feeling in my gut.
On July 21, 2024 I was baptized in Lake Johanna alongside my two brothers. As my face broke the surface of the water and my lungs filled up with air, I felt the weight I’d carried for years finally lifted. No longer did I have to depend on my strength, my understanding and my abilities to overcome my problems; I had someone else to help me. My purpose was in God’s hands, and through Him I was free from the burden of living for other people. I chose to live for Him.
On the car ride home, soaking wet and singing along to “Goodbye Yesterday” by Elevation Rhythm, I folded my hands and prayed (still not out loud, but consider this column a verbal declaration of my faith) that Jesus would deliver me from fear and social anxiety. And since then, my genuine curiosity in other people and passion to express my thoughts and ideas is stronger than the enemy’s voice telling me not to put myself out there.
The Lord has allowed me to think of myself less and others more, and it’s brought me a sense of peace and freedom that I’ve been searching for since the fourth grade.
And He doesn’t point a finger and declare someone to be “too Christian” or “not Christian enough” (and I’m sure He wouldn’t send me to the eternal take-a-break chair for a fire Hermoine impression). He says we’re His beloved children. Salt of the Earth. Light in the darkness. Witnesses to the world.
How could anything be embarrassing if that’s who an almighty God says we are?