What is one thing you would change about yourself?
Someone once told me that when I get up to preach, it’s like watching someone flick a switch. One moment I’m my usual quiet self, and the next I’m fully present—clear, confident, grounded.
Here’s the funny thing: that version of me on the platform is the real me. There’s nothing artificial about it. It’s simply that I’ve had time to think, to pray, to shape my words, and then offer them. Preparation gives me a strange kind of courage.
But life, as it turns out, is not delivered in prepared segments. Most of it happens in the in-between places: the mingling before a meeting, the open floor of a reception, the loose edges of a dinner party, the conversational drift at an event. Those spaces—unstructured, fluid, unpredictable—are the ones where my quiet shyness comes to the surface.
It’s not the dramatic, paralyzing kind of shyness that people sometimes imagine. It’s subtler than that. A slight hesitation before entering a room. A tendency to stand back until I’ve found my footing. A softness in my speech when I’m not sure whether to join a conversation or let it pass by. A sense of being slightly exposed in moments where everyone else seems to flow effortlessly.
People often assume the preacher or the leader is endlessly confident, ever-ready, easily social. But shyness has always lived quietly in me. It’s been there in childhood, adolescence, early ministry, and now in leadership. It’s not debilitating; it’s just woven tightly into who I am.
And yet, if I could change one thing about myself, this might be it.
Not because I dislike it—there is something gentle, observant, and deeply human about shyness. It has taught me to listen more than I speak. It has given me empathy for people on the edges. It has shaped my leadership into something that seeks connection, not spotlight.
But every now and then I wish I could move through unstructured social moments with the same ease I feel when preaching. I wish I could speak without considering my place in the room.
I don’t want to become extroverted or performative. I don’t want a bigger personality. What I want is simply a little more freedom—a little more comfort in my own presence, not just when I’m prepared but also when I’m not.
Perhaps the change I most long for is not to replace it, but to integrate it—to let the thoughtful, prepared version of me and the quieter, hesitant version of me become better friends.
Because in the end, both are real. Both are me.
I’d just like the quieter one to feel a little more at home in the world.
The Afterword 
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