Nevertheless, at the ripe age of twenty-seven, I managed to express my entire storehouse of spiritual wisdom in twelve minutes. Coffee hour began ten minutes early that morning. I believe the surveys that show people fear public speaking more than death are true. I remember the mixture of joy and anticipation, as well as fear, when I married Roger, and when I birthed our first child. In these instances, the anticipation far outweighed the fear.
Flight is a powerful response to fear.
Sometimes we disguise fear, and it takes hard work to realize it is the major emotional experience with which we are struggling. In response to our fear, we do things that make us look heartless or cruel. I remember 1962. I was a student at Montgomery Blair High School. My grandmother, then sixty-nine, was a frail, southern woman, Jehovah's Witnesses in faith, who had lived a life of deprivation and hardship.