THE LOST ART OF RELATIONSHIP
the whole faculty, admin staff, the president of the college, and pastors from the area would be there too.
Needless to say, I thought I would never be chosen. However, my professor and the students in the class saw something in me that I had heard when I was younger but had long since suppressed. The first time I spoke in front of a group of people to teach, I was eighteen years old. My uncle allowed me to teach on a Wednesday night. Several people came up to me afterward and said there was something about my speaking that made them want to listen. They wanted to listen!
I was chosen as one of the two senior speakers elected out of the entire class to give the Friday chapel sermon. I could not get out of this one. It was one of the most challenging assignments I had ever done, but it also resulted in a breakthrough. The insecurities of losing face with the entire school if I did not speak well were overridden by the insecurities of what they would think of me after I was done talking.
That sermon—spoken to over five hundred peers, professors, and pastors— began the awareness of insecurity and my journey to fight daily against the negative effects of allowing it to take over my decisions, relationships, and potential accomplishments.
Our insecurities are the inner screams we wish no one would hear. We do not want to confess them, for fear they make us look weak. When someone discovers them or sees them in us, we build up a fortress that looks strong on the outside. As a matter of fact, I can hear that inner voice right now saying, “No one wants you to write about this. What if someone thinks less of you or stops caring what you are writing?”
Yes, that’s right. I have struggled with battling my inhibitions and insecu- rities most of my adult life. I wish I could say I have overcome them. However, whenever I get close to a success, the battle rages. I have become more proficient at silencing these thoughts, but I remain humbled by them nonetheless. Why would anyone confess this? I must be crazy, right?
Maybe. One thing I have learned is that being vulnerable up front (not baring all my faults, but showing others that I am who I am, faults and all) tends to shoot down the negative thoughts flying around my thought airfield. It has taken me a long time, and I am not successful at this all the time. Yet, when I am faced with the uncertainty, anxiety, and diffidence surrounding me, it has become easier to climb over those emotional obstacles when I make the decision not to listen to them.