Finding your voice

Finding Your Voice

As a child, I didn't know what it meant to find my own voice.  But I knew I wasn't allowed to speak.  I couldn't speak my pain, my confusion, my loneliness.  I had those feelings but couldn't put them to words for myself, much less for others.  I couldn't ask my Mother why she treated me the way she did. I was not allowed to speak.  No one cared how I felt. 

As a teenager, I couldn't speak my awkwardness, my lack of self-confidence, my broken-heartedness.  I wrote those words on paper for myself prompted by an English teacher who was a God-send at that moment in time.  Even seeing the words on paper didn't help me understand what I had done to deserve the treatment I was dealt from a Mother who never wanted me.  I  once tried to put into words how I felt about a boy who had broken my heart.  My mother said, "oh well, you'll get over it."  No kind words of solace.  No words of understanding.  When my father died, I cried on the anniversary of his death.  She said if I was going to cry she was going in the other room.  No compassion for a daughter who had lost a father and a hero. 

It took me a while to find my voice.  And even when I found it and understood it, I still couldn't speak those words.  I worried what people would think of me.  I worried that people would see the damage in me.  I worried that people would find out the shameful things in me.  So I kept quiet.

If I have one thing to teach my granddaughters, it is to find your voice.  Figure out who you are.  Talk to your mother who loves you more than life itself and who will never steer you wrong.  Listen to your father's wisdom.  But more than anything, find yourself.  For only in finding yourself, and in being true to that authentic self, will you ever find your voice to advocate for yourself or for others. 

Live your life so you don't fear what others will say about you.  Don't put your private life on social media.  Be true to yourself.  Ask for advice.  Make wise decisions. Those things sound contradictory but they are not.  Living a life that is good and pure will guarantee you won't have to worry what others will say about you.  Keep your goodness to yourself.  Don't brag.  People will judge you whether they know you or not.  Don't stand on the corner and pray.  Let your life be the light that shines for Jesus.  

Almighty God, whose loving hand hath given us all that we possess:  Grant us grace that we may honor thee with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of thy bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.