For anybody that doesn’t know, I go to a small, private, Christian school in south central Kentucky. Part of my requirements to graduate is to take a public speaking course. Initially, I was very reluctant and already had sweaty palms just thinking about enrolling in the class. But I thought, hey, I have to take it anyway. I might as well get it over with first semester. So I did.
The first assignment in the class was to take an anxiety survey to gauge improvement over the semester. I was ranked in the moderate to high level. We started off the class with minor speeches. Just talking about ourselves and our hobbies and songs. But something incredible has happened. We as a class have opened up so much to each other. Our first speech, people shared about themselves and right off the bat people were sharing highly personal situations and they felt safe. I know this because with our next speech, the life lyric speech which connected your song lyric with your life, people shared about everything. They talked about parents in jail or with drug addiction or parents and loved ones that they had lost. It was an amazing thing. Everyone was so respectful and caring.
This brings us to this latest assignment: the eulogy speech. Except we didn’t eulogize people. We eulogized a negative aspect in our life or a bad memory. I decided to eulogize the negative aspect of anxiety. The morning before my speech, I wrote an outline and prepared myself to talk about how I can get overly stressed out and how I now trust in God, I even threw in a Bible verse. That speech was never heard.
During the speeches, people eulogized bad memories of tragic family deaths, watching parents do drugs and overdosing, and being separated from their families by child protective services. I went after a girl who had a mom who did drugs, went to prison, escaped prison, was then released only to come home to her daughter that watched her get her throat slit. My problem seemed so small.
But I went anyway, and with shaking hands began my speech. I started with my first opening sentence about how everyone struggles and how I have struggled with anxiety. I then began to talk personally. I described how I would get anxious over anything and everything last year. How I would cry and get so overwhelmed and feel hopeless and bogged down by all my stress. Then I spoke about Jesus. How Jesus saved me and tells me that I am enough and loved and about how He will always take care of me. My voice was shaking along with my hands when I noticed my teacher tearing up along with some of my classmates, which in turn, made me tear up. I closed with Matthew 6:34, “For do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”
That was not what I meant to talk about for my minute and a half speech, but apparently God had other plans. Maybe somebody in that room of special people needed to hear my testimony. Maybe I needed to hear my testimony. Whatever it was, it was me sharing my testimony for the first time. All I am reminded of now is that God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good.
