Wednesday, January 31, 2007

My Moses Complex

So, my biggest fear (with regards to myself) happened today. Someone from church emailed me and asked me to say the opening prayer in Sacrament meeting. This might sound like something small to you, but, I get nervous praying in front of anyone but my husband (and even that has taken some getting used to!). I just don't feel confident about it. Really, I'm not confident SPEAKING in front of people if the words have to come from my own head, at the moment, rather than being written or something. If we wrote prayers down on paper and read them (besides the fact that it would be a canned prayer), I would be much more comfortable. I would still be nervous, but it would be more like other people's nervous, not MY nervous. I CANNOT speak in front of people. My mind goes completely, utterly, 100%, totally, entirely blank. Well, maybe that's not true. I'm probably thinking something like, "What's that loud pounding sound in my ears? Is someone hitting my head with a hammer?"

This is where Moses comes in. You know how the story goes? If not, refer to Exodus 4:10-16. Moses feels incompetent about speaking to the people, the Lord tells him he can do it, but Moses still says he can't, so the Lord gives him Aaron as a spokesman. Besides the spokesman part, I feel like this. I KNOW I should be able to do it. But public speaking is such a fear and weakness for me that I just can't do it! This is what I told the woman who asked me to pray. I apologized, and I feel really bad about it, but it makes me want to ditch church or run away. My heart beats faster just thinking about thinking about it. And you have to give me some credit--we spoke in church in September, and I fully intended to have an outline for my talk and not read the talk. I practiced trying to come up with a few words, just with Peter! and I couldn't. I can't speak from my mind when I'm on the spot! So, for my actual talk, I even wrote out some sentences introducing us to everyone, and when I got up there, I was unable to deviate from what I had written down. I tried to think of something to say, and I couldn't. I read my talk, and it went well, and people said I seemed cool as a cucumber, even though I was nervous.

That makes me think that those nerves are the nerves other people experience. My praying or speaking from my head nerves are a PHOBIA. I was reading a book once, about panic attacks and such, and it said if you fear something enough to radically change your behavior to avoid it, that's a phobia. So I've decided I have a "saying something from your head in public" phobia. And I've been working on it! In the last year, I prayed once in Relief Society, and once in Sunday School. That was REALLY scary! If I have the closing prayer, my heart pounds for the WHOLE meeting. But I'm proud of those steps. My goal is to be able to pray in Sacrament meeting by the time it will be an example to Little Chub. And that scares the HECK out of me. (Can you tell I feel strongly about this, with all these CAPS?)

Yeah, so anyway, I just had the wind taken out of my writing sails by receiving a reply to my email to Peter's head TA about his birthday. He's sorry, but there's nothing he can do because everyone has complicated schedules. They're meeting at 4 (and it makes me wonder if that was the original time, or if he moved it a little). And he says if they work well and fast, they might finish by 6 or 7. And they're having pizza! Peter won't be able to resist eating pizza (he'll be hungry!), and there will be no point in going out to dinner. :o( This makes me cry. Oh well. I knew grad school wasn't going to be bunches of daisies anyway, and it's been much less dog-poopy than I expected it to be. We're blessed that things have worked out so nicely so far as it is. At least he passed the Quals, and he didn't have to put nearly as much time into that as we thought he would!

Sigh. I'm still sad though.

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