What If...?
on fear, honesty, and the God who meets us
Earlier this week, I spoke at a worship night hosted by the women’s ministry at my church. As I finished and left the stage, I paused backstage to take my mic off and hand it off to the sound team, cut through the greenroom where I’d spent most of the previous hour watching the event unfold on a screen showing multiple camera angles, and slipped into the back of the sanctuary to join in the last few minutes of worship.
I’d spent most of the day wondering the same thing out loud to my closest friends: What if this is all a setup? What if this is an elaborate plan to kick me out of a church I call my own? What if the parts of my story I’ve been invited to share are actually unwelcome in the place that asked me to share them? What if this is too much? What if I am?
While those fears and insecurities disappear every time I step on a stage, immediately replaced with a sense of deep purpose and a conviction that my only job is to get out of the way enough for God to move, they’re often waiting for me as soon as I step off. I don’t think they come from a place of self-doubt as much as they do from a gnawing fear that I’ve shown too much of my hand, and that once all the cards are on the table people will see me the way I’ve always feared they would: too far gone for grace. Despite praying for the courage to be honest, I almost always wonder afterward if honesty was a mistake.
More often than not, those fears have been baseless. In my adulthood, my honesty has consistently been met with compassion rather than condemnation, curiosity rather than judgment. Even so, those fears insist on making their case every time.
As I slowly made my way through the back of the still-darkened sanctuary, though, worship music enveloping me, those fears didn’t surface. Instead, I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for a church that knows my story and still trusted me with its people, and for a God who, for some unknown reason, continues to use the part of my life I’ve begged Him to erase for more than I could have imagined.
The fear that instructs me to become an expert in myself was quieted by worship, which redirected my attention to Someone far more worthy of it. Instead of replaying every word I said, I joined the hundreds of voices praising God for being who He has always been.
Fear, for all the noise it creates in my head, has never propelled me toward God. Worship has always done the opposite, gently turning my attention back toward the One who has been faithful all along.
