Confidence goes on silent retreat

Today I feel stuck, well all week actually. This Sunday I am preaching at my church. It is the first time I have preached there, and I am filled with this feeling of total inadequacy. That here I will be weighed in the balance and found (as my form three social studies teacher Miss Mann would say ) Most profoundly wanting my dear girl!

Each angle I go down feels weak and facile. This is a community used to highly thought provoking complex preaching and I am struck by a sense of dread of me standing up there going 'umm.... today's sermon is kind of about love...maybe and sin...oh are we allowed to say sin?... ummm oh yes there is forgiveness and blindness, and stuff... and Jesus rocks'

Visions about starting out saying that it's all about the vibe... have become more frequent and the after sermon formation discussion has gone from something I was looking forward to, to something that I feel totally sick about. To have my confidence go off for a silent retreat on me isn't helpful. Thoughts of practicing a dramatic faint are not off the cards.

It all seems so odd when last week I stood in the Cathedral no less, preaching on that which I am most afraid in myself, and here where I should feel supported and upheld by my community I instead feel isolated and as though any minute I will be thrown out of the church doors and told never to come again.

Just to clarify this is not how the congregation are this is purely what is happening to me....I think... I know... rationally...sort of.

So anyway this is how it is surprisingly this week in the life of this woman on the edge.

God if you can help bring it on, Jesus if you would like to open my mouth on Sunday and let the words pour out then all power to you.
Otherwise comments, suggestions, pre-prepared sermons, prozac and prayer gratefully accepted.

Meg