I never understood the advice on public speaking about imagining your audience in their underwear. Maybe it’s because I don’t multitask well but I can’t imagine talking about God’s mercy while also trying to focus on an array of undergarments. Besides, it’s just creepy. While the intent may be to make the speaker more comfortable, I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable than a room full of people wearing only bras and briefs.
I considered the absurdity of that advice while trying to identify what would make me most nervous about public speaking. I figured if I addressed any unease, I would be better prepared. I wasn’t overly concerned about a word stumble and since I fell on my face in Kindergarten, I figured I had gotten that out of the way. What I realized made me the most nervous was that I would hurry through, wish the moment away, and just get it done. The worst thing that could happen would be that I would miss my own talk by not embracing every moment with my fully clothed audience. It is a gift to speak about mercy. I wanted to be present. I wanted to experience the joy of it.
It made me realize how often in life I have shrunk from the fullness that God created. I have held back. Blended in. Been too careful. Too many times, I have listened to fear over the only one who can deliver me from it. “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,” (Psalm 18:2). I’ve always had a relationship with fear. Maybe on some level, I thought if I kept it close, it would keep me safe. But fear doesn’t keep us safe, it keeps us small. It keeps us living in the shadows when God has called us into his light. By trading fear for trust in God we can live in the freedom of his truth. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety,” (Psalm 4:8). With God, we don’t need to be afraid. He is strong enough to carry us through our suffering and merciful enough to heal our hurts. Having a relationship with him doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen. It doesn’t mean that we won’t fall on our face or some creepy person won’t picture us in our underwear. It just means that with him, through him, fear is a farce of the devil’s making. We don’t need strategies and sayings to make us courageous. We simply need to trust that God has us in the right place to carry out his plan in our lives.
Virginia Slims cigarettes used to have an empowering ad campaign directed at women, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” If we ladies had come a little farther they would have left off “baby,” but it was the seventies and that’s as far as we had come: an anorexic cigarette, marketed specifically to our gender, empowering us to “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.” (That was another ad campaign for Enjoli perfume).
Sometimes I feel like a tiny bird with an injured leg from an encounter with the claws of a crazed cat. I know how lucky I am to be here and how much worse things could be; yet, still, I carry a limp from my wounds that sometimes keeps me tethered to the ground. (I might start telling people that when they ask me how I am doing.)
Often, I feel like Queen Elsa in the 2013 Disney film, Frozen, with let it go repeating in my head like a scratched record or a warped mix tape warbling words of what has got to be the greatest three-word sentences in the history of ice queens.
In a reporting class, I took in college, if a student’s article had any factual errors, the instructor automatically took 50 points off their grade. It didn’t matter how insignificant the mistake was it resulted in an inevitable failure on the assignment. Fact checking was more important than your lead, punctuation, or your inverted pyramid. The paramount significance of accuracy in news reporting was underscored.
Last year, seventh-grade parents were given the assignment to write their children a letter explaining the meaning of life. Seriously? Why not just write the cure for cancer? Or, solve the problem of world peace? Or do ninth-grade algebra? The meaning of life?! 
I spend a lot of time with the devil I know. A lot of us do. We are stuck in careers, relationships, routines, and ruts that we long to change, but don’t. There is a litany of reasons for this: fear, laziness, uncertainty, and lack of confidence. It boils down to the notion that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.
In grade school, at the beginning of the school year, students are often asked to write about their summer vacation. However, as the sun begins to set on the season, I am contemplating how to live like its summer all year long.
When I was a child, I considered freedom to be something grown-ups enjoyed. They can eat what they want, stay up as late as they want, watch what they want, buy what they want, and do what they want.