She was late because she got lost. She said that she was too independent to call me sooner. Because it was getting late I changed the plans from going out to staying in. I put the water on to boil, turned on the oven, pulled out a couple baking pans, and made fresh muffins. I made it look effortless and casual. For the first time in my life I was a super woman.
Then we talked as only two women can talk over a pot of tea, even though we hardly know each other. This does not matter, we have both agonized over careers and love and friendship, so we talk like old friends and about old friends. This one and that one, she tells me, are getting married. I add a couple more to the list. She inquires after the possibility of my own marriage and I answer frankly. So I show her a picture of us taken at Thanksgiving, and she gets to see his humor in the picture he placed on my screensaver. He is dressed from riding his motorcycle to our Sunday evening social hour, and before playing with Grace, our friends' child, he jokingly sits on her tricycle. Her mother thinks this is funny too, and takes the photo which now scowls from my computer screen.
My guest looks thoughtfully at me as we move toward the door. "You certainly can not be taken at face-value.... I would never have guessed... all this..." her gesture means to include the insights she gleaned from our conversation. She said this before, last time she was visiting, that something about me had changed. She tried to describe me as she had known me in college, and she imagines, for some reason that all this was beneath that surface, when I laugh. I was the way you thought I was then, I assure her, because I did not know myself that I could be a competent, intelligent, and interesting woman. I regret to think of the people who did believe this, and never got to know me the way they wanted to.
She wants to know if it was work that brought me out of my shell, which I agree to, then quickly disagree. Work, I explained, was more likely to stuff me back into that shell. In the describing why I forgot to tell her how Christ had changed me. When I finally sought His intimacy is when I started getting comments like those above.
I should have told her about the time I sat on a rock and really thought about that rock--it's texture, shape, temperature, size, smell, and the way it felt to sit upon it. I knew, with my feet dangling off the ground, what God wanted for me, He wanted to be my rock and my salvation. So I asked to know Him so well I could rest on Him as I rested upon the rock.
I also had a theory behind my shyness: I had no self-confidence. As a Christian, this meant I had no confidence in Christ, so I started praying from Timothy to know no shame over my belief, but to have confidence. My belief, faith, and knowledge grew. My confidence in Christ grew, and I can not remember the last time I was scared shy like I used to be. I have moods where I prefer not to socialize, and people believe I am not feeling well, but the fear is forgotten.
Since I did not tell her, I wanted you to know.
