Overcoming Fears

Allen and I went to his relative’s birthday party.  Before we ate, his cousin asked me to lead the prayer before meal but instead, I pointed to Allen. By the way, Allen is the man God has sent to me so through him I can receive God’s gift of relationship.  Suddenly, all attention was on him; he wasn’t able to do anything but lead although I got a split-second look from him that tells me that we will be having a long talk after the party.

I felt like I will be in trouble later on so I decided that as soon as the prayer is over I would hand him a plate and give him a kiss and tell him I love him. By then I will get away for being a ‘pushover’.

When he started praying it was like me praying and talking to God. It was the first time I heard him lead a prayer in front of a lot of people, even with non-Catholics in the room. It was the best birthday-before-meal-prayer I have ever heard because he led us all into prayer, without the tension of being judged as a Catholic or as a non-Catholic. The ambiance felt like we were all united by the blood of Christ and that we were all blessed to dine together and celebrate that another Christian has reached another year of his life. For a moment we were all in awe by Allen’s amazing prayer and how God has moved us all.

When he said ‘Amen’, I just hugged him and told him how great it was that he allowed the Lord to speak through him. He felt so blessed, but after two minutes that he was able to look around at how much people was present in the room and realized that he had spoken before them; his body started shaking.

I remembered him telling me a story about him being embarrassed in front of a lot of people. Allen used to be a vocalist and a guitarist in a band.   One day when they were about to perform, he got overwhelmed by the audience’s presence that he could not sing. Being so embarrassed for not being able to sing, he walked out. Since then, he has not overcome his trauma.

At first I did not understand his dilemma, but when he invited me to take a long walk along Corniche, that was when I felt what he was going through. As we walked, he held my hand so tight and led me to where there were a lot of people. I somehow enjoy the holding hands. Then, he started swaying my hand and asked me to hop instead of walk. The hand swaying gave me goose bumps and the hopping made it more unbearable. I faced him and told him that I love him and that I enjoyed being with him, but I just cannot do the hopping thing because I feel like I am in place covered with bombs that is to explode any moment and a tsunami is on the way to totally erase me from the earth.

Although this is what I am going through, I am willing to do that given time to prepare myself because I love him and I will walk a mile with him, doing that if need be.

He said that it was the same feeling that he experiences whenever he is in front of a lot of people. He feels blessed all the time he is with CFC-Singles for Christ but asking him to lead a prayer or share in front of a lot of people is a big deal to him. However, he is willing to overcome it one at a time.  And when the time comes that he cannot face it, he wants me to be there to be his prayer warrior.

At the end of the day I felt how great God is for giving me a heart to take his gift of journey called life.

Piya Yang, SFC Qatar