Excellent non-fiction contest entry Coming Out of My Shell by dovemarie My Best High School Memory contest entry

A few days before Thanksgiving, 1971, my class went on a religious retreat to the Ephetha House in Rhode Island. It was a religious trip for a weekend. I was 15 and in my junior year of high school. One of the activities was to perform skits or poetry readings, stories or singing before the class on one of the evenings of the retreat. A classmate named Susan was an accomplished pianist, and she was playing "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from "Jesus Christ, Superstar." I had recently discovered that I had a singing voice (though I had never taken lessons), so I joined in with her playing, singing to her accompaniment. She asked me if I wanted to sing that song later on that night. I immediately said "Yes." That night, I sang so beautifully, my voice soared out, that all the girls in the class got up on their feet and clapped. One of them, named Gail, said, "I couldn't believe that voice was coming out of little you!" (I am 5'2"). It was the first time I had ever sung in front of an audience. One of the teacher sisters who accompanied us on the retreat asked if I had taken singing lessons. I was the quietest, most unpopular student in the class, but I came out of my shell for that time. Ephetha means "be opened," and I certainly felt as though I had opened up to my fellow students. Christ performed one of His miracles, healing a deaf man with the word "Ephetha." I truly feel as though he was with me and had "opened" other people to me for a little while. Author Notes Thanks to Dieter Robbins from Pixabay. This retreat inspired me to become a member of the church choir two years later, and to take singing lessons when I was in my 30s.

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