During high school, I was in an all-female choir class.  When the teacher asked us who wanted to sing a solo in the school’s annual spring production, she was met with silence.  So she “volunteered” me.

I don’t know what she was thinking.  There were certainly more talented singers than I in that class.  Regardless, my objections were ignored and she insisted I could do it.  It was just a prelude piece, a very short lead-in after which the entire choir would join in singing.  But for me in my bashful nervousness, I may as well have been asked to sing completely alone.  For an hour.  While prancing around in my underwear.  The complete and utter panic would probably have been the same.

The way I remember it is that I completely bombed the first night.

My throat closed, I could not get enough air into my lungs, and even the person standing right next to me could barely hear the squeaking that came out of my mouth.  No stretch of the imagination could call that botched attempt “singing”.

How was I possibly going to go through that again?

The choir director took me aside, and I thought she was going to make my dream come true and cut my part.  Instead, she told me something along the lines of, it wasn’t about “me” as the solo singer.  I was just a part of a bigger thing; the song as a whole, and the entire choir.  I could focus on myself and get all jittery and wigged out over a 30 second part, and where would it get me?  Or I could view it as something we were all a part of, put my heart and soul into it and end up having fun.

Fast forward ahead several years where I was once again jolted into reality by a loving woman.  She had noticed my shyness, which translated into the fact that when I was in any group, I would latch onto the one or two people I knew well and basically ignore everyone else.   If someone did  attempt to engage in a conversation with me, they were met with brief mumbled responses that quickly ended in awkward silence.

She pointed out the truth of the matter; shyness is just pride. Being shy comes from being overly self conscious, which comes from fear.  What if I make a fool of myself? What if I’m humiliated/laughed at/ignored?  What it came down to was the fact that I wasn’t thinking of others, I was using my introverted personality as an excuse to be selfish.   People weren’t impressed by my coyness, they just thought I was rude.  And I was.

Over the years, conversing and mingling has become much less painful for me.  And yet any time I am confronted with experiencing anything out of my comfort zone, which is often, I find myself needing to repeat in my head “shyness is pride“.

Usually when I admit to this anyone they find it difficult to believe, seeing as though we frequent large gatherings in addition to opening our home regularly.  Each occasion stretches me, pulls me out of my own insecurities as I place my attention on the needs and interests of those around me.

And, if anyone would have told me those many years ago in high school that I would eventually be singing into a microphone in front of people every Sunday afternoon, I wouldn’t have just laughed, I would have suggested they begin wearing those nice white jackets with all the helpful buckles.

I’m still being stretched.