Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

fear of public speaking

God Doesn’t Promise Bad Things Won’t Happen

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leaf and bud

Public speaking is not my favorite part of my job, namely because I am afraid of it. Thus, I typically prepare for an event weeks in advance, writing out my talk, practicing it out loud multiple times in the kitchen while my dog stretches out at my feet, tweaking it and then tweaking it some more.

I also make sure I have detailed directions to the event location, my books and bags packed the night before, my clothes laid out, and my water bottle filled and waiting in the fridge.

My husband Brad says I am Triple Type A, which might be a bit of an understatement.

These are the preparations I made recently for a speaking engagement in Osceola, Nebraska. What I didn’t prepare for, couldn’t possibly have prepared for, however, was the fact that Brad would undergo an emergency appendectomy in the middle of the night, six hours before I was scheduled to depart.

I also didn’t expect to have to arrange, in a flurry of late-night texts and phone calls, for friends to take my kids overnight, nor did I anticipate having to leave Brad in the hospital three hours after his surgery, or to have to explain (sheepishly) to the night nurse why I wouldn’t be there to pick up my husband when he was discharged the next afternoon.

I also never expected to give two talks on three hours of sleep.

When my alarm jolted me awake at 5:15 the morning of the event, I immediately began to worry.

I worried about Brad.

I worried the hospital staff would judge me for abandoning my husband.

I worried I wouldn’t be able to string together two coherent sentences when I stood at the podium to speak.

Still fretting an hour later when I slid behind the steering wheel, I made a conscious decision. Sitting in my driveway with the engine running, I decided to trust God with everything that lay ahead of me.

“Here you go, God,” I muttered aloud into the pre-dawn darkness. “This day is all yours.”

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leaf with cracks

red leaves and bud

You should know, I don’t like to trust God. I’d much rather trust myself, thank you very much, because trusting myself feels like control. And let’s be perfectly clear here: I like control (as is evident by my obsessive event preparation and my propensity for organizing my sock drawer).

But here’s the hard truth: we don’t get to control every aspect of our lives. We can’t plan everything to work out exactly as we desire.

No matter how much we prepare, bad things–big bad things and small bad things–happen.

The event in Osceola went well, in spite of the fact that my plan didn’t unfold exactly as I would have liked. I drank too much coffee, my heart thudded like a jack hammer, my feet sweated, and my second talk was breathless and rambling. But the ladies didn’t seem to care about or even notice my imperfections; they exuded grace and compassion. Back in Lincoln our friends rallied to our support, Brad recovered well, and if the hospital staff judged me for being a no-show, well, at least they didn’t do it to my face.

In spite of my obsessive planning, everything fell apart that weekend, but God stayed the course. The Lord goes with us; he doesn’t leave us, nor does he forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6).

God doesn’t promise bad things won’t happen; he does promise he will be with us every step of the way.

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You Really Want God to Send Someone Else

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One of my favorite lines in the whole Bible is Moses’ response to God when God asks him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt:

“Pardon your servant, Lord,” Moses responds to God. “Please send someone else.” (Exodus 4:13)

I love how polite and respectful Moses is. And I love how he refuses to budge, even when standing face-to-face with God himself. Moses has moxy. Can you imagine outright refusing God, straight to his face?

I can. I do it all the time.

Last spring my friend Lelia called one evening to ask a favor. Turned out, one of her conference speakers had a family emergency. Three days before the retreat, Lelia was calling to ask if I might be able to step in to speak.

I said yes to Lelia on the spot. Then I got off the phone and spent the next two days desperately trying to come up with a Plan B.

I wrangled with God. I bargained with him. I begged and pleaded. I was, quite literally, Moses – terrified to speak in front of a crowd. “Come on, Man,” I said to God. “You know me. You know I hate public speaking, and you know I don’t ever, ever roll with anything. I’m high-maintenance. This is not my gig. I do not do eleventh-hour speaking engagements.”

Of course, God would have none of it.

No Plan B presented itself. I went to that conference, and I stood in front of that crowd with my knees knocking. I sweated so much at the podium, I removed my bracelet, my watch and my jacket during the talk. I joked to the audience that it was a good thing we only had 45 minutes, or I might have been standing in my underwear by the end of the hour.

While the talk wasn’t perfect, it got done. And just as God promised Moses, he was right there with me, right there in the room.

Before I spoke at the first session, my roommate, a woman I’d met only hours before, sat down next to me at the back of the room as I was nervously cramming for my talk. She put her hand on my shoulder, and she prayed for me – for strength, for articulate words, for a message that would sink deep into the hearts of the women participating in my session. Jen was my Aaron. She gave me the assurance and confidence that I could, and would, walk to the front of the room, stand behind the podium, and speak.

“God’s not interested in competence as much as he is in willingness,” writes Evi Wusk. This, I know from first-hand experience, is true. God can create competence in us, but he won’t create willingness – not because he can’t, but because he wants us to say yes to him on our own accord. God gives us the choice – yes or no. And if we choose yes, he guarantees he will be with us every step of the way.

Questions for Reflection:
Has God ever asked you to do something you absolutely did not want to do? Did you ever answer the call like Moses (and me) and try to say no? Can you think of a time when God was present for you, buoying you in your weakness?

 

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When You Fall on Your Face and Everyone is Watching

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I participated in my first official speaking engagement this past weekend at the Refresh My Heart conference in Nebraska City. I didn’t expect to, but when a friend had to bow out at the last minute because of a family emergency, I agreed to step in. As I mentioned earlier, public speaking isn’t exactly my thing. Truthfully, I kept cursing under my breath during the four days leading up to the event. I was praying like a madwoman, too, but let’s be frank … I was also cursing.

I spoke twice – same material, two different audiences. The first session went really well. I couldn’t have asked for a more engaged, receptive audience. I was smooth as gelato.  I worried I’d be a mumbly-jumbly Moses and I was articulate Aaron instead.

A miracle! God is good! Hallelujah!

I was on a high.

And then? Two hours later, I bombed the second session. Big-time.

Honestly, I don’t know what happened. Like I said, it was the exact same material. But as I stood at the podium and looked out at the audience, I saw no fewer than three women dead asleep and another one in the back texting furiously. As I was speaking I worried about what she was texting: “This speaker rots! Snooze-o-rama! Bring me a coffee asap!” The rest of the women wore a glazed “for-the-love-of-the-land-make-her-stop-talking” look on their faces.

I panicked. Instead of Lamazing and recalibrating and doing something to recapture the audience, I simply panicked. I talked faster and faster and faster, bent on a single goal: to finish the talk, scurry off the stage and hide in the bathroom.

Later, a woman who had been in the second session said to me, “You did pretty well. Considering you only had four days to prepare.” I know. It was that bad.

I beat myself up during the entire 53-minute drive home. First I berated myself for rushing through the material, for choosing the topic I did and for not practicing enough. Then I obsessed over how I’d disappointed a roomful of women who had paid money to nap through my talk.  And then finally, I beat myself up for not being my friend, the one who was supposed to speak, the one who clearly would have rocked the room and rocked Jesus and been way more successful.

Back home, though, curled in the fetal position under my grandmother’s afghan, I realized something — something that enabled me to see the gift in the experience, even in the failure.

I realized that in failing, I was humbled.

I admit, I can let success go to my head faster than a horse goes to hay. After that first session, I was feeling pretty cool, pretty confident. I was thinking I could take the speaking circuit by the horns, no problem. But the truth is, I’m not quite ready for the big leagues. There is a process to this, a necessary period of growth and learning. As it turns out, I have a lot to learn. Clearly I’m not going to snap my fingers and become Christian Speaker Extraordinaire overnight.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr once said that he prays that God will humble him at least once a day. When I read that, I thought he was brave and perhaps mildly insane. After all, who actually wants to be humbled? Who wants to be intentionally and purposefully brought down, brought lower? As tough and uncomfortable as it is, though, I now see the power in being humbled. I see the power in humility. Humility is a gift, because it teaches me who, exactly, is in charge.

And it’s not, nor should it be, me.

When’s the last time you were properly humbled? Did you see it as a gift? 

“God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. We’ve finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade.” (Romans 3:27-28, The Message)

Blogging Benedict: Real-Time Obedience

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Funny how God works sometimes. As I read and write about St. Benedict’s vow of obedience this week, God is teaching me the lesson of obedience in real time.

Jane Tomaine notes that the Latin root for obedience is obaudire, “to listen thoroughly.” She points out that in his Rule, Benedict describes obedience as both listening and responding:

“Those who practice obedience set aside their own concerns, plans, and tasks, even going so far as to leave work unfinished  in order to respond quickly to the request. The requested action would be completed without hesitation, almost at the same moment the request was made.” (from St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Benedictine Living)

When I check my phone on Monday, I see a message from an unfamiliar number. It’s Lelia. Turns out, one of the speakers on the agenda for her conference this weekend has a family emergency and can’t make it … might I be able to speak in her place?

I say yes.

Let me tell you, one of my greatest fears, second only to throwing up, is speaking in public. I would rather visit the gynecologist and get a mammogram and a root canal and my legs waxed all in the same day. I would rather stand in line at the DMV every day for a month straight. I would rather clean hard water deposits off my bathroom faucet and my neighbor’s bathroom faucet and her neighbor’s bathroom faucet with a toothbrush. I’d rather do just about any other dreaded task over speaking in front of an audience.

But I say yes. It’s so obvious I should say yes that I don’t even think about it. “No problem,” I tell Lelia. “It’ll be totally fine, I promise.”

Then I hang up the phone. And Freak. Out.

The funny part about this story is that only hours before, I’d griped to Brad about how I needed to line up some speaking engagements. Not that I want to line up speaking engagements, mind you, but I realize speaking is part of the territory: published writers are expected to speak. Some days I wish I lived in the 19th century so I could hole up in an attic like Emily Dickinson and just write without worrying about the platform-schmatform and social media and whether I should wear pants or a skirt when I speak in public.

“It seems like all these speaking opportunities seem to drop right into other people’s laps,” I told Brad that afternoon. “I don’t get it.” He’d shrugged. Clearly he didn’t get it either.

After I got off the phone with Lelia and was catatonic on the couch in primal freak-out mode, Brad reminded me of our conversation earlier in the day. “Hey, you just got a speaking engagement dropped into your lap.” Not to be an ingrate, but I’d been thinking more along the lines of “dropped-into-my-lap-with-four-months-notice,” rather than “dropped-into-my-lap-with-four-days-notice.”  God is clever like that sometimes, isn’t he?

Oddly, in between bouts of catatonia and feverish PowerPointing, I am also feeling an overwhelming sense of peace and calm. Part of me knows that everything will be fine, just like I told Lelia. There’s something liberating about being so hopelessly out of control and in over your head. There is serenity in knowing I can’t possibly do anything but hand it entirely over to God.

So that’s what I am doing. Being obedient. Handing it all over to God – the worry, the insecurity, the fear, the queasiness. Trusting that he will be right here with me, teaching me what to say (Exodus 4:12).

So tell me, when’s the last time you were hopelessly in over your head? How did God set your heart and mind at ease?

I would so deeply appreciate prayers for my friend, the one who was originally scheduled to speak, who is dealing with a family emergency right now. And also, while you’re at it, that I might keep my head on straight, not succumb to primal freak-out and, above all, convey God’s message to the ladies at the Refresh My Heart conference this Saturday. Amen. And thank you.

This post is part of my Friday Lenten series  called Blogging Benedict. I am using the text St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living as my guide.

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