The Courage to Keep Showing Up When You Feel Embarrassed

by Ash Verdeck | The Epiphany Effect | May 29, 2026

There are moments when embarrassment feels louder than everything else.

Mine happened in the middle of the first reading at church last Sunday.

I laughed.

Not because something was funny. Not because I wanted attention. I laughed because I completely panicked.

If you’ve ever done a church reading around Pentecost, you already know where this is going.

Words like Parthians. Elamites. Cappadocia. Phrygia. Pamphylia.

I had prepared. I read through the reading before service. I practiced pronouncing the words. I thought I was ready.

Then I stood in front of the entire church, stumbled over a couple words, got embarrassed, and laughed into the microphone.

Definitely not the ideal moment.

And the funny thing is—it wasn’t my first time reading. It wasn’t even my fifth.

But afterward, I kept thinking about why I signed up in the first place.

Because I want my boys to see someone willing to try.

I want them to see that courage doesn’t mean confidence. It doesn’t mean getting everything right.

Sometimes courage looks like standing in front of a room full of people, messing up, wanting to disappear for a minute, and showing up again anyway.

That awkward moment reminded me of something I’ve needed to hear in other parts of my life too.

Fear has been driving more decisions than I wanted to admit.

Fear of not saying the right thing. Of putting something out there that isn’t perfect. Of being judged.

And if I’m being honest, some of that fear has kept me away from things that bring me energy and joy—including my podcast.

So I’m taking my church-reading disaster as an unexpected lesson.

The goal was never perfection.

The goal was growth. And becoming the kind of person who signs up again.

So here I am—getting back to the podcast, getting back to creating, and getting back to showing up.

Because sometimes the lesson isn’t learning how to pronounce Pamphylia.

Sometimes the lesson is realizing you can survive mispronouncing it.

And maybe the real epiphany is this: The things that matter most often ask us to risk looking foolish first.