Journal the Journey

My voice has been either raspy, deep, or cracked all week, I believe due to allergies. I’ve never lost my voice due to illness that I can remember until this year, and this is the 2nd time it’s happened in the past 6 months. When I put my 8 year old daughter to bed the other night, I asked if she wanted me to sing her lullaby even though my voice is messed up. I sang a lullaby the prior night, the first night my voice was gone, and she giggled all the way through because of how funny it sounded. But this night, it wasn’t funny. She cried after I finished singing her lullaby and told me that she really misses my normal voice. She said that her lullabies don’t sound the same because this voice is making me mess the song up and I never mess the song up. It was so sweet and sad all at once to comfort her as she longed for my normal voice, the voice she’s so used to hearing when I’ve sung her lullabies thousands of nights, from the time she was even still in the womb. I assured her that it will come back.

As I held her, I knew in that moment there was a spiritual truth that I wanted to muse on. I’m using these few minutes to do that before the memory slips out of my head, and it’s my hope you and I both are led to a truth about God as a result of my effort to hear Him in this story.

What immediately came to my mind as I wrapped my arms around her was that fact that I could relate to her sadness in a very real way. God’s voice has not sounded as familiar to me as I am so very used to it sounding. I’ve heard more silence lately than I have in a long time, yet my faith remains unwavering and I know I just need to hold firmly and press in.

The voice of God is all throughout the Bible. Paired with it is usually a call to obedience and/or a softening of the heart (for a hardened heart is deaf to His voice). God is always speaking, for He loves us and wants relationship with us. If we can’t hear Him, or if His voice is sounding strange, we do well to ask Him what’s going on and what can we do to hear Him better. Sometimes it is repentance of sin we need to do, sometimes it is assessing whether we are wholeheartedly pursuing Him or halfheartedly going through the motions (which should lead to repentance if our fair assessment, with the help of the Holy Spirit, shows us that we have not made Him the sole ruler of our heart). Sometimes the silence or unfamiliar voice simply means we need to grow, and this is part of the means He needs to use to help us.

One thing I have to remind myself of is that silence does not mean I am abandoned. I believe it means in this case He is using silence to gain my full attention and prepare me to pay special attention when He so clearly speaks again. I’ve been a bit spoiled in this season of my spiritual life, where nearly every single morning that I’ve sat down with His Word (my Bible) and a notebook I’ve found myself fully immersed in Him, to the point tears would stream down my cheeks in awe of His mercy and love, or laughter would rise up from my soul as I tasted of His infinite, glorious goodness, or I would write until my hand hurt in response to the revelations He was giving me. Hmm, perhaps spoiled isn’t the right word, as I know it brings Him great delight to reveal Himself to us in such powerful, unmistakable ways. I’ve indeed tasted and seen that the Lord is good. I’ve drank deeply of He who is the fountain that never runs dry. So when I enter these valleys in my spiritual life, I don’t like them at all. I long to go back to the powerful encounters. I still see Him and all His goodness when I open my Bible in this time, but He is obviously working on teaching me something in these unfamiliar waters because I am not hearing Him as well. So I press in. A scripture from Isaiah 30 the 8 year old memorized at VBS this summer keeps resonating in my soul; it is this scripture that reminds me that He will continue to light my path and show me the way and I must continue to obey as I seek and wait.

The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide Himself any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher, and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”