If you’ve struggled with timidity, you know that it doesn’t look like pride from the outside. It looks like shrinking and staying quiet. It looks like holding back thoughts that matter and letting other people mistreat you or take up the space you don’t feel entitled to claim.
But timidity is a form of pride. Not the loud arrogant kind. It's the quiet, internal kind. The kind that convinces you it’s safer to stay unseen. Safer to manage life on your own terms, without risking who you are.
Through prayer, through surrender, through God’s quiet and steady work, deliverance starts to happen. You don’t push your way out of timidity. You’re drawn out. God brings you forward in His timing, in His hands. What once felt locked starts to loosen. What once felt impossible becomes simply the next faithful step. (As I write this, I have an image of a beautiful butterfly in my mind).
You emerge not because you decided to be brave, but because God is gently untying what fear and self-protection had bound. You find yourself speaking when you would have stayed silent. Showing up when you would have isolated. And even then, it feels tender and unfamiliar, because healing often does.
You speak when you would have swallowed your words. You show up instead of pulling away. You stop defaulting to isolation.
NONE of it feels natural at first.
It feels......exposed....unsettled.
Like you’re doing something wrong just by being there.
You literally have to FIGHT against the urge to run and hide.
THAT'S the part people don’t talk about enough.
When you’ve lived shut down for a long time, growth doesn’t feel like confidence. It feels like disobedience to your own emotional muscle memory. Every instinct tells you to retreat. Your body reacts before your mind can catch up. Your feelings insist that this isn’t safe. You’re overstepping! Go back! Confidence is uncomfortable!
But....feelings aren’t the same thing as truth.
God’s will is NOT for you to live withdrawn, muted, or isolated, hiding what He placed in you out of fear.
He didn’t create you to disappear!
He didn’t call you to bury yourself to avoid discomfort.
Yet when you start moving in a healthier direction, it can feel wrong simply because it’s unfamiliar.
That’s when things can get confusing.
Often, just as you’re pushing through those internal alarms, something happens on the outside. A comment lands harshly. Someone misunderstands you. A reaction feels dismissive or sharp. Whether it was intentional or not, it hits hard. It feels like a slap. Or a shove. Like you misread the situation and stepped out of bounds.
And the old reflex kicks in immediately.
See!? You should’ve stayed quiet!
This is what happens when you are YOU!
That moment can feel especially disorienting because it lines up so perfectly with your internal discomfort. Your emotions are already screaming that you’re doing something wrong, and then life seems to agree.
The temptation to retreat feels like the answer when really it’s just fear wearing familiar clothes.
Discomfort is NOT the same as disobedience.
When you’ve been timid for a long time, your emotional reflexes are trained for hiding, not for obedience or wholeness. Your feelings lag behind your growth.
They haven’t caught up yet.
So when you do something healthy, something aligned, they protest.
And they do it loudly!
But that doesn’t mean you’re off course.
It just means that you’re retraining muscles that have been clenched in self-protection for years.
Being visible will sometimes bring friction. Not every negative reaction is a sign you made a mistake. Sometimes it’s simply what happens when you’re no longer invisible. When you were silent, there was nothing to push against. Now there is. And sometimes the resistance doesn’t come from wrongdoing at all, but from discomfort. People get used to the version of you that stayed quiet, agreeable, and easy to overlook.
When God begins to bring a fuller version of you forward, it can unsettle them. Not because you’re wrong, but because you’re no longer who they expected you to be. Almost like a "WHOA! Who is this?!"
You may still feel the urge to crawl back into the shell. You may even need to pause and breathe and steady yourself. And that’s okay! Growth doesn’t mean you never feel small again. It means you no longer let that feeling make all the decisions.
Since I’ve noticed these changes happening in me, I’ve spent more time in prayer about them than I ever did when I was bound up in fear. Sometimes all I can do is sit on the edge of my bed and cry, asking God to help me understand and process what I’m feeling. Sometimes it’s just an open dialogue with Him, because you’re afraid to go to anyone else with it.
“God, why does this feel so uncomfortable, like I did something wrong? Why is it that every time I step out and don’t let fear control me, I hear that critical voice telling me I’m out of line? Why does trusting You, having confidence in who You’re calling me to be, and actually walking in it… why does it feel dirty and shameful?”
Timidity tells you that peace comes from disappearing. God invites you into a deeper peace that comes from truth, yes.....even when it’s uncomfortable.
I don’t always understand that truth in the moment. Often, I’m still sitting in the discomfort, still asking the questions, still waiting for my feelings to catch up with what I know to be true.
But I'm learning that emerging doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in moments like these, when everything in you wants to withdraw, and you quietly choose not to but instead let God help you process the feelings He is healing in you.
***Side note before I publish this***
Yesterday, during pre-service prayer, God gave me the word EMERGE. Well, it was a phrase with that word in it.... but still the same. I had actually forgotten about it, and I’m so glad I wrote it down. As I was getting ready to hit the “publish” button, I remembered and went back to check, just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind :) .
Yes! The same word that was on my heart this morning!
I didn’t plan that. I didn’t force it into the writing. It showed up naturally, the same way this season of healing has. And it felt like a quiet confirmation from God. A gentle reminder that this process, uncomfortable as it is, is still His. That He’s present in both the praying and the writing. And that emerging in His hands isn’t something I imagined. It’s something He’s already doing!
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