From Silent to Speaker

People are often surprised when I tell them I still get nervous before I speak in front of churches or groups. Sure, those nerves can point us inward in fear that we won’t be enough, but they can point us outward to dependence on the One who creates all the beauty, even in the midst of our mistakes.

Usually once I’m up on the stage, I find my rhythm and feel the connection with people. I access the passion to free others and share the thoughts God is shaping, and I come completely alive.

But my nervousness isn’t the only obstacle I’ve faced on my journey to speaking boldly.

Knowing my love of speaking, and my current high score on the extrovert scale, you might be even more surprised to know that in 9th grade I was voted “QUIETEST” in our high school superlatives.

I take this vote with a grain of salt because this was a tiny Christian school where “Best Christian Testimony” was also a superlative category (and I’m not sure if that means most exciting or most moving or least offensive, but seriously we need to give the spiritual ranking a rest.)

And when I say “tiny” school, I mean my whole 9th grade class was approximately 11 kids. Where am I? I’ll give you one guess.

With the gender ratio, you’d think this was some super awkward Christian high school version of the bachelorette.

Quiet? Well yes, I was, and I had reasons beyond my bad haircut. In 9th grade I was just starting out at a new Christian school, having returned to MA after three insecure middle school years (homeschooled) in Alabama. There’s a whole lot to unpack in that one sentence, but it provides sufficient reason for any kid to feel insecure and shy.

Before all the major moves, I was still shy at times. But I had my people. I knew my surroundings. I wasn’t always confident, but I had great friends and I was ridiculously chatty and giggly with my friends.

During all the changes, theater was one of the few ways I could communicate bravely. I could talk all I wanted as someone else. Maybe I just wasn’t so sure about talking as me.

But at home, when no one was watching, I spent hours in front of a mirror, pretending I was speaking to people. My older brother called me out on it. Mirror talking is weird.

But I didn’t know at the time that speaking would become a dream; or perhaps more accurately, that I would one day be able to unearth and own that dream.

The quiet girl exists at times, but more often she’s eclipsed by the girl who craves conversation and speaks passionately.

The shy girl still has her moments, but now her friends employ her as a social wingman, because she loves meeting new people.

At times I’ve looked back and wished that my journey were different. That I would have been bolder sooner, or at least knew what I wanted to do with my life in college instead of waiting till my late 20s. I’ve wished at times I’d been born a male and could have pursued a speaking pastor role with no resistance, or that I had chosen to go to seminary regardless. I’ve wondered at times if I’d have more confidence if I hadn’t move so much. I’ve wished my path didn’t require type-1 diabetes.

(I bet you can make your own list of the things in your own life you might alter if you could.)

But all of this is the path that brought me here. All. of. it.

I see people more now because I moved so much and know what it feels like to be new and unseen. I didn’t graduate college, but I was confident in starting a family in my early 20’s and that is an experience that has shaped my heart and the message I now get to communicate. I now see a passion and voice that God gave me intentionally as a woman. And the pain and uncertainty of medical issues has perhaps most radically shaped my walk with God and given me access to love others in ways I never could have otherwise.

I am not a second rate story. I am not some broken version of a better me.

I am God’s child. He leads me down paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. He walks with me through fire. He creates beauty from ashes. He restores and renews. He completes what He begins in me. He has called me to a Holy life not because of what I’ve done, but because of His plan and purpose. I am a planting of God’s, and every unlikely bloom is a testimony to who God is. He is mine, and I am His.

And so are you.

We need to stop believing that some personality trait, weakness, mess up, or life circumstance gets to define who we are and what God births in us. We need to stop trying so hard to fix or change the path God put us on because we honestly have no idea where God is taking us.

If we give the pages of the Bible even a passing glance, we’ll see that the heroes of our faith rarely have stories with outcomes that are congruent with their beginnings. Youngest David, stuttering Moses, pagan Ruth, insignificant Gideon, scarlet letter Rahab, Christian-killer Paul.

When we let go of control over how it is supposed to look, we might be more awake to the absolute miracle of the place we are today. We might start to see the implausible story God is writing in our own lives.

Then when God moves where we least expect and never imagined, we can speak these words with Mary:

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.

(Luke 1:46-49, NIV)

The path God takes us down is rarely the one we would have chosen for ourselves. And the space we occupy now rarely seems compatible with the soil we grew from.

Thank God I’m not in charge.