Saturday Rant: Dominoes

I always find it interesting how life can be very much so like dominoes sometimes. Let's see, my husband went out of town this last fall. I volunteered to preach for him while he was gone. I told a friend about the online copy of the sermon. She forwarded it to a few folks, next thing you know, I'm doing a short testimony at my weekly Bible study. What I'm really wondering it "What next?"

You see, when I got done preaching, and my husband came back into town, we talked about how people reacted to the sermon. Then we talked some more when I was asked to share again. And the question was, maybe I'm supposed to be open to talking more often.

To be honest, I haven't done a lot of talking in groups since I had a really bad experience a few years ago. I was always opinionated, in fact I still am. I have lots of opinions about most everything from how warm my house should be to which way the car should take me from point a to b. But I found myself in a group of people who could care less about what my opinion was. Well actually, they couldn't care less, because they hated my opinion about most everything. I don't think that I once ever heard them say "Good idea. Thank you so much for sharing." Instead, I was often met with silence and then there would be talking about me after I had left. Considering, that is something I always feared people were doing, it was pretty tough knowing that it was happening and that they weren't saying nice things about me at all, but how bossy I was and how I thought I knew everything. Not that I ever heard them say that word for word, but you know how rumors are.
Well, ever since then and because of a few instances in High School, I just don't share as much as I could. Because honestly, like I said before, I really do have an opinion on how things should be done and who should do them. I guess part of not sharing is learning that most people aren't really asking what my thoughts are, but are actually asking for affirmation of their own thoughts. I know that there are times when people really do want to know what I have to say and I try to honor that, but you'd be amazed by how often people ask for advice and then do what they wanted to do all along.
All that is to say that for the most part, when it comes to groups, I've been keeping my mouth shut as often as possible, except for the raw times when things escape, and to be honest, I still get the impression that even though people are friendly and not talking about me behind my back, that they don't like my opinion 9 times out of 10. That's the problem with talking, you open yourself up to criticism. And most of the time, even if people say that they are being constructive, they aren't they're just telling you about their opinion of your opinion. And sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, sometimes it hurts and sometimes it causes you to pass out in a bathroom after throwing up so much that it's nothing but dry heaves. Not that I would know anything about the latter, but that's my opinion.

So the domino is still falling and I can see the idea of the one falling where I end up in front of people, talking more often. And I know that there is the grand possibility for criticism, but I just keep singing in my head over and over again "If you want to steal my show." and I know that what ever the domino lands on next, it's going to be okay.