Last night - I finally found my voice.
Last night I got my voice back. Actually that’s not true – I think perhaps I may have found my voice for the first time.
When I commented on this fact a friend asked “Hey Ginger, where’d your voice go in the first place? Did a giant lady octopus steal it? Do you have a flounder & a crab for homies? Ever seen ‘Hipster Ariel’ before?” While I do have two fabulous broskettes who might enjoy being referred to as Sebastian & Flounder, and while I do have red hair and fill my cavern of a domicile with trinkets – my voice was most certainly not stolen by an obese, power hungry, & jealousy ridden sea witch. Rather, my voice has eluded me ever since I was small child due to the grossly obese misunderstanding that I was not worth enough as a person to ever bother sticking up for myself, setting boundaries as a woman, or saying no to anyone who might attempt to transgress upon me emotionally, mentally or physically. I grew up thinking I was worthless, and living in a way that let everyone around me know I intended to forever be as such.
You see, I discovered over the last two months that there is a pattern in my life that my quality of life has greatly suffered from. As a care-taking type with an immense depth of empathy, the pattern I suffer from is one in which I tend to feel the urge to care for and encourage healing in men who are hurting or broken. Unfortunately I figured this fact out while in the process of caring for a friend who fit such a description and whose hurt & disrespect for other people ran deeper than any who had come before him. Not only was he broken emotionally but he had just found out that his stage IV prostate cancer had grown into his bones in addition to several other organs, at the young age of thirty-two. If ever there was a time where I really didn’t want to face my unhealthy relationship patterns due to guilt – this was one, because to do so would leave someone who was fatally ill potentially alone on their deathbed. I don’t think anyone could feel good about that. So I prayed…
And I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. Because while I know that growing my character as a daughter of Christ is such an important task – I also hated from the very core of me, having been made in the image of my Loving Righteous Father, the idea of abandoning anyone… let alone someone who was hurting to the depths my friend is. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me peace & serenity in knowing how closely Jesus was with us both through this. I prayed that He would give me clarity on how to care for myself as Jesus would have cared for me and still care for my friend as Jesus would have me care for them. I prayed that Jesus would help me understand how to find forgiveness for my friend, having just found out that money went missing three times in connection with his presence. I prayed that my Father would reveal to me understanding of how precious He really thinks I am. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me the words to tell my friend no, to tell him that I would no longer allow him to take advantage of me. But the Lord works in miraculous and beautiful ways, and through two miracles – He revealed to me that I do have a voice and that I should not fear any opportunity to use it.
The first miracle that prepared me was the way God worked through my friends, new and close, to speak into my life. I have two amazing girlfriends, my Flounder & Sebastian if you will, who have walked alongside me closely through my last two relationship/social flounderings. They’ve loved on me by offering comfort, blunt honesty & insight into where I’m getting myself in trouble and what lies I may be believing, and they have been faithfully present in my life the whole way through. No matter how messy or uncomfortable it got, no matter how many bad choices it takes to get me to the lesson at the core of it all. That’s real biblical community right there – loyal, faithful, committed, consistent, servant hearted Christ-centered love.
In additional to my two friends loving on me so thoroughly, I recently started developing a friendship with a truly humble Jesus loving brother from my small church group and through this friendship God has revealed some awesome things about how much He truly thinks I’m worth. While getting to know this brother we’ve talked a lot about what we have in common, which led us to an exciting understanding of the commonalities in each other’s pasts. And through the comfort of that shared understanding, we were both really encouraged to be completely transparent about our struggles with sin, the motivations & roots of those struggles, as well as what we are actively doing to work with Jesus through those struggles. It felt so good to hear someone say that they did X because of Y, when all this time I had never felt – even in my closest Christian circles – an opportunity present itself to share the same thing and expect to feel God’s grace lavished upon me. But to be able to respond “Me too; I’ve been there, felt that, done that because of the same reasons – and it encourages me greatly that you’ve made it through to the other side of healing,” has generated a new sense of empowerment & freedom in my heart to drop my shame and walk in the light. There have also been moments in our conversations where, in response to the shared struggles we’ve faced from different perspectives within those struggles, this brother has taken the time and energy to express to me his intention to make sure that as his sister I do not have to fear being treated the same way or put into the same situations that express a lack of value for my identity as a royal daughter of Christ. To find freedom in both complete transparency as well as authentic biblical respect from so many directions, I truly feel like I’m living in an entirely different reality from the one I was raised to participate and live in!
The second miraculous series of events are the ones in which I truly found my voice. After talking with Sebastian & Flounder in depth and feeling great conviction from the Holy Spirit to trust Him enough to act through Him rather than my own strength - I finally worked up the guts & trust of the Holy Spirit to confront my sick friend about his blatantly disrespectful behavior toward me and our friendship. The fear I felt – let me tell you, in a brief moment of distrust in the Holy Spirit, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and rottenness for ‘putting my friend through this’ just days before he was due to start radiation therapy again. But I gave myself a mental slap, went and stood emotionally under the wing of my great Comforter, and addressed the issue with frankness as well as truth in how the situation affected me. This was a great victory because never before had I felt it would be valid to tell someone their actions weren’t okay in direct relation to the effects on me. An even greater victory was when the Spirit convicted me in the moment, as my friend denied any validity or liability or responsibility for his actions, to walk away and step into prayer rather than letting myself get worked up emotionally (which would have led to saying a lot of things that were unnecessary and counterproductive.) I walked away, I stepped into faith that my Father would resolve it according to His plan, and I felt strangely at peace.
This morning my friend, whom I had already committed to letting stay on my couch prior to his conduct being revealed and our confrontation occurring, left for his first round of radiation therapy. I knew, given our confrontation & my newfound joy for staying in the light without fear of condemnation, that it was not a good idea for me to be alone with him in my home last night. So I had asked Sebastian to stay the night, with explanation of why – and she lovingly agreed. I also held myself accountable by letting my brother from church group know that my sick friend was staying and that I was having Sebastian stay the night as well. All three of us were comforted by the idea of the extra protection around me and the situation and I felt an immediate peace and satisfaction as fruit from my pursuit of righteous resolution to the situation.
And then I dreamt in the wee hours of this morning, with Sebastian beside me in my room & my friend sleeping on the couch just hours away from leaving for his first treatment, the most beautiful dream. You see, to give you some backfilled understanding, I had been having these horrendous apocalyptic nightmares ever since I was about 7 years old. Almost every night since I was seven I have dreamt that some terrible tragedy was befalling the world and it was my responsibility to save everyone. I would run around endlessly, and ineffectually, attempting to warn & save people. Consistently, either no one could hear me talk or no one heeded my warning. The end of the dream would come and I would be forced to sit and watch as people I cared about were devoured and destroyed by one disaster after another. All the while attempting to scream, but no sound would ever come from my mouth in the dream. It has always been chilling but it has also become a sort of norm for me, particularly because I have never been able to scream in real life ever – no matter how hard I’ve tried or how appropriate a situation. Last night was different.
Last night I dreamt that a major disaster was occurring and everyone in the building I was in was rushing to safety on the roof. As I too was rushing around, I remember trying to drag a man with me – and that he wouldn’t listen to anything I was saying and ignoring my attempts to get us to safety. Finally, I made it to the roof alone. I looked around and saw another man, who in real life is an amazing man of God & goes to my old church back home in Seattle where he recently married the love of his life. At this point, a mob starts to rush toward the man and his wife – and I realize that there is a perpetrator involved in whatever disaster we are all running from and somehow these people think this man is that said perpetrator. I start to think in my head about all his redeeming qualities and solid character and wonder how they could make such a terrible mistake.
Suddenly, I have the fierce desire to set the mob straight and protect the man and his wife. Upon acknowledgement of this desire, a bat appears in my right hand. This stands out to me because I have NEVER once held a weapon in my dreams, even if I seek one to try and protect myself or others – in which case I never seem to be able to find one. That’s when I start to sense something is different. But my wonder is confirmed as fact when, as I begin to run toward the mob to stop them, the strangest most unfamiliar sound escapes my throat – a scream. For the first time in my life, both dream life and real life, I was able to scream for them to stop. My vocal chords had suddenly found both the articulation and volume to express the emotions I was trying to impress upon these fear driven thugs. And miraculously I never even had to use the bat, as they were so startled by my screaming for them to stop because he was a good man and they had made a mistake that everyone dropped their weapons and backed away. It was the most amazing, empowered, righteous feeling I have ever experienced.
And then I woke up. I woke up both from a very strange intense dream & I woke up from the foggy lie that I was worth too little to speak up and be heard. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit spoke to me through that dream; that He wanted to express to me the value in being heard and in stepping out in righteousness to speak out. I think He wanted me not just to hear but to truly believe that MY VOICE was given to me by my Creator as a beautiful & important part of His plan – and that to not use it, to hide from it, to deny it and not seek it would be grave denial of His power, His love & His strength to protect us. When I woke up this morning, I suddenly knew who I am and understood just how fearfully and wonderfully made I am: All for His glory.
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