Freed from being shy

Melissa Hayden | from the Christian Science Sentinel

Focusing on God, not simply accepting the problem, heals shyness.

We’d sung together and sat next to each other at a couple of our community chorus rehearsals in the previous season. I thought we were starting to develop a good rapport. But with the new season beginning again, my neighbor acted as if she didn’t know me. This seemed to be a familiar occurrence for me. Just as I’d begin to get to know someone, they’d seem no longer to be interested. What was wrong with me?

Although I’d asked that question of myself repeatedly over the years, I was determined to look at things differently this time. Before, my answers might range from “I’m not interesting enough” to “That’s just the way it is.” But I was learning that this line of reasoning was pretty self-centered. It focused exclusively on me and my travails. It not only left God out of the equation, but everyone else, too. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy addressed this point of view head-on when she wrote, “Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind” (Science and Health, p. 91).

I began to discover that my prayers were actually agreeing with my plight rather than striving to heal it.

As I considered this sentence, I began to discover that my prayers, which had been along the lines of “Dear God, please make so and so like me” or “Help me not care,” were actually agreeing with my plight rather than striving to heal it. Instead of discerning how great was the “substance of Life or Mind,” I was seeing only my own smallness. This kind of praying tended to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it. And I truly wanted to end what might be called an inferiority complex.

Looking at existence from a purely material view, we tend to lump people into groups of superior and inferior, haves and have-nots, “them” and “us.” To acquiesce to these kinds of delineations is to agree that good is limited. According to the Bible, that’s impossible. The first chapter of Genesis states six times that what God made is good. That covers everything from light to landscapes and from porpoises to people. All that God created is good. In fact, in many languages, including English, the word God is rooted in the word good. In addition, the Bible states that God’s presence fills all space (see Ps. 139:7). Prayerful reasoning from these two Scriptural facts leads us naturally to the conclusion that good is also ever present. That means that good must be as infinite as God is.

In the same passage quoted above, Mrs. Eddy went on to write, “The denial of material selfhood aids the discernment of man’s spiritual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed the material senses.” Understanding this statement, I realized, needed to be the basis of my prayers. I set out to gain the discernment of my own and others’ unique spiritual nature, as well as to deny what appeared to be all too true in my experience: that I was a shy or inferior person.

Instead of developing coping skills, I could heal this problem.

This was exciting work. Accepting that I could actually challenge the suggestion that my personality was already set, and that instead of developing coping skills I could heal this problem, was already beginning to free me from its grasp. As I turned to God in humble prayer—that is, prayer that seeks to learn what God knows about any given situation—I started uncovering places in my thought where I had simply agreed with the propositions that certain occasions must be difficult. Or that certain people just wouldn’t find me enjoyable. Or—and this was the toughest of all—that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Another prayer that took on special meaning during this time was a phrase from the Daily Prayer, found in the Manual of The Mother Church: “… may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!” (Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of The Mother Church, p. 41). I reasoned that I didn’t have to wait for affections to be enriched toward me, but that I had an opportunity to affectionately reach out to others. What an insight that was!

Bit by bit as I embraced these prayers—not only striving to agree with them in thought but to live them as well—I began to be more outgoing and less put off by circumstances. Over time, it became more natural for me to initiate a conversation instead of waiting to be spoken to. Along with this increased friendliness was an accompanying decrease in being judgmental. I recognized that it was my own thought about situations and people that was being transformed—not ultimately the situations and people themselves. This newfound ease in dealing with others included an appreciation for their natural friendliness.

The woman I’d sat next to those many years ago? She’s now one of my dearest friends.