Getting the Words Out, Part 2…The Debt I Owe You
Kathy Twynam
A few weeks ago, it was my turn to read the scripture passages in our worship service. As I was standing at the lectern, reading with almost perfect fluency and no anxiety, I was thinking about how, only a few years earlier, I could not, and would not, have even considered doing such a thing.
For all my years of involvement in church affairs, the one thing that I would never agree to do was to read aloud. I remember being asked by Rev. Jan, early in his tenure with us, if I would read the following Sunday, and telling him that he could ask me to do anything else but “please don’t ask me to read.”
So what changed?
In October 2020, I wrote an article for Graceviews, titled “Getting the Words Out”, which described my life-long struggle with stuttering, explaining with great verbosity what stuttering is, and how it had affected my life and the lives of other chronic stutterers. The article was prompted by watching the Democratic National Convention in August of that year, as current United States President Joe Biden accepted the nomination for his party in a lengthy, dynamic, flawless and perfectly fluent speech. I knew Joe Biden to be a life-long stutterer, and I thought it remarkable that he had ascended to the most influential and powerful job in the world, despite his challenges. He describes these challenges as one of the hardest things he has ever had to overcome.
As a child in Catholic school, he remembers being mocked by classmates, and, shockingly, a teacher. For a man who couldn’t utter a fluent sentence as a boy, it is absolutely astounding what he had achieved in his lifetime of public service. He is an inspiration to me, even more so now that he has put country ahead of self, done the right thing, and stepped out of the 2024 race to the presidency.
I believe my 2020 article to be the turning point for me, somehow resulting in a profound change in attitude that I consider somewhat of a miracle. I haven’t quite figured that out yet, beyond a feeling of, well, it’s out there now, the congregation knows that reading aloud for me is challenging, and if they don’t like it, I can live with that. My stutter is part of me, always has been, and since there is no cure, only management, always will be.
Since early in 2020, at the request of Rev. Rebekah I have been responsible for preparing a roster of lay scripture readers. One day, when the pandemic was mostly behind us and we were finally able to worship in person again, I took the bull by the horns and put myself on the list of readers, as an experiment to see how I would handle it. I must admit, the first time I got up to read in church I was extremely nervous and had to curb my desire to flee, but to my surprise I found I could do it reasonably competently, with few hesitations. Somehow, I had found a way to mitigate my disfluencies, to read the words in measured tones, taking a breath when I needed to and focussing not on myself and my butterflies but on the word of God that I was speaking. I was mystified, having spent a lifetime trying to avoid speaking, or reading, in public. But then out of nowhere the thought popped into my mind that God was right there beside me holding my hand, just as He was with Moses, whose initial and immediate response when God told him to persuade Pharaoh to “let his people go” was, “No way, Lord!”
But he did it anyway.
So I put myself on readers’ the list again, a few weeks later, to see if the first time was just an anomaly. It seemed it wasn’t. As the months went by and I continued to do the readings periodically, I found myself becoming progressively more comfortable, and came to want to do it, considering it a privilege to participate in the service in this way.
And, my dear friends, I have you to thank for my new-found liberation. Today when I am reading the scripture or doing the Prayers of the People, I look out over our wonderful faithful, kind congregation and see, not a group of strangers sitting in judgement, but a gathering of friends who, I know, will forgive me if I stumble. Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone, for this tremendous gift you have given me, the gift of freedom from fear.
“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than delivering the eulogy.”
-Jerry Seinfeld