Finding My Voice

I am all about learning from your past. But when your past is keeping you from moving on, something has to change. I thought I was doing well but over the past several months, I’ve begun to admit to myself that I’ve yet to return to normal. I’ve been spending a lot of time in prayer asking God to show me areas that I need to focus on – in order to get back to who I really am so that I can continue to grow.

One of the things I’ve been noticing is that I don’t speak nearly as much as I used to. I listen and observe but I don’t always share what I’m thinking. In fact, I rarely do these days it seems. I was hanging out with a group of people the other day for a couple hours and as I was leaving, I realized I had yet to say anything to add to the group’s conversation that night. And for an introvert to conclude they need to talk more…well I’m pretty sure that is a red flag.

I’ve always been quiet but if I had something to say I would say it. But for some reason, now, more often than not, I don’t say anything. I realized this was not healthy and I needed to figure out why I didn’t talk much anymore. So I began to be more aware of how much or how little I shared when I was with other people.

I quickly started noticing a regular debate going on in my head over whether or not to share what I was thinking. As I listened to myself in my head, I realized I was convincing myself that what I had to say was dumb, pointless or a waste of people’s time.

Talk about Negative Nancy!

It would seem that I’m more broken than I thought. Where did I get these ideas? For a time, I was made to feel that my ideas, my thoughts, my words were meaningless. I remember feeling this way based on constantly being cut off, sideways glances, being outright ignored and on more than several occasions being told that because of my age/gender/lack of experience I didn’t know what I was talking about.

My words, thoughts, opinions – they often were under valued or not valued at all and somewhere along the way I began to say less. To think less. To share less. I guess it was just a defense mechanism that has stuck around so that now I can be around people for a couple hours and not even contribute to the conversation.

And based on the running commentary that goes on in my head as I try and speak now, I at some point started believing the lies. Apparently even after all this time, I still believe what I have to say isn’t valuable. My opinions aren’t really worth anything to those around me. But God has been working with me to replace those lies with his truth.

One of the ways God lets me know that he is in fact talking to me but I’m not listening or I’m questioning if it’s really him is when he repeats himself through different people and different conversations. He’s been doing that lately. It seems like friends and individuals have started conversations or made comments at separate times about speaking up, adding to the conversation and the value of each person’s voice (including mine).

God has given me a voice. I may not use it as much as I should. But I am using it more than I did yesterday. And I used it more yesterday than the day before. God has been using the people around me to speak to me and he wants to use me to speak to others. But if I’m not speaking, not sharing then how can he use me? He will find someone else.

God has given me a voice that I can use in different ways – probably because he knows I like variety. Whether it’s through verbally speaking, film, writing, photography – he has given me a voice to use. A voice that has purpose and meaning, a voice that has value. A voice to speak his truth, his laughter, his life into people. A voice I am finding again.