Often at the beginning of Sunday service at CLC our pastor will put a two minute countdown on the screen and encourage us to share something with those sitting around us. One morning he asked us to share our greatest fear with each other then he quickly walked all the way back to where I was sitting and asked my greatest fear. The first thing that came to my mind was my first experience speaking before a group of people.
Afterwards, I wondered why that event came to mind instead of other fearful times in my life. You would think my mother and I fleeing our burning home when I was 9 with nothing but the clothes on our backs, then watching as it burned to the ground would have topped my list. But the memory of that event is forever softened by humor. We fled to our neighbor’s house and because I was recovering from the measles my mother asked the neighbor to call our doctor and see if I needed any special care, while she ran back and untied our dog from the clothes line near the house. When she got the doctor on the line the neighbor blurted out, “I’m calling for Mrs. Anderson. Their house is burning down and she wants to know if Jimmy can go outside.” I learned that day that laughter is a tremendous stress reliever. My mother also laughed when I told her and she said, “I hope he said yes.”
You would think my brush with death when I was twelve should be high on my list. I became sick and our old family doctor treated me for the flu, but I kept getting worse. My grandmother was babysitting for a young doctor and his wife. She told him about my illness and he told her to have my mom bring me to the clinic where he worked. He diagnosed it as histoplasmosis and put me in the hospital and then on complete bed rest at home. After a few weeks of improvement I suddenly developed a cough again. He told my parents if it was a recurrence of the histoplasmosis there was nothing more he could do for me. He came back with the test results and a big smile telling them it was pneumonia. When he ordered me back to the hospital I was not smiling. I had only been a Christian for a year, but I knew it was God who found that doctor for me.
At 19, while stationed on Okinawa I rode out a typhoon that directly hit our small communications base. Then later I spent three very tense days on alert during the Cuban missile crisis. We came very close to World War III as Chinese jets and our planes all scrambled in preparation. I guess I was too busy for the fear to burn itself in my memory.
In every survey about what people fear most, fear of public speaking ranks higher than the fear of death. So, my memory as a fourteen year old standing behind the pulpit of our church in front of a congregation of about 200 and sharing my experiences at summer church camp was the fear that came to my mind. I don’t think it was the stage freight I experienced that burned it into my memory. It was because that was the first time God led me out of fear. His perfect love cast out my fear and I still enjoy speaking to groups of people to this day.