Weekly Word for July 25, 2010 Defining Ourselves

I was in retreat this past weekend at The Snail’s Pace, a beautiful retreat center in Saluda, NC. It was a small group of only eleven people. It was a weekend of reflection, prayer and understanding. 

 

One of the women in the group was a vocalist for many years. She was a music major in school, a soloist of the finest quality but several years ago, she contracted a virus that infected her vocal cords. She lost her voice for nearly three years as a result. 

 

She couldn’t talk, or barely so and she certainly couldn’t sing. She now has a full voice after much therapy and she shared at the retreat, what that experience was like. She said that when you can’t talk very well, you really measure your words. She said she would often have to consider when she thought of something she wanted to say, whether she really wanted to use her limited voice to say it. In other words, she would ask herself, “is it worth saying?”

 

The result was that she found there was often very little she wanted to say. This was a surprise since all of her life, she had been quite a talker!

 

She also said that she had been defined as a soloist for most of her life. And then, through illness, the song disappeared. She couldn’t sing. So who was she, if she wasn’t a soloist? She is in the process of deciding and discerning just that.

 

What she does know fortunately, is that she is a special woman in God’s eyes, a unique creature of His creation. She knows she is loved by God, whether she is singing or not. She knows that singing doesn’t have to define her and actually shouldn’t. She should be defined in the light of God’s creation and love. That is enough.

 

I came home from the weekend, to read about Roger Ebert’s journey from throat cancer, how for four years now, he hasn’t been able to speak or eat or drink. He had the same kind of struggle. After all, he was defined as a movie critic and one that lived by the sound of his voice. Well, what do you have when that is gone? He has found out, you have a lot.   He is fortunate, his voice can be recreated, technologically, but what did not need to be recreated, was his love and his heart. Nothing changed there, except as his wife shared, he might have grown more loving in the process of loss. 

 

I was especially struck by his decision not to undergo any more surgery to reconstruct his face. He has basically decided that he is healthy, he is happy; there is no need to reconstruct his face. As he shared, “we all have our imperfections. Why make a big deal about it?”

 

We do tend to define ourselves by what we are, what we do or the title we bear, don’t we?

 

There are so many ways that we lose the definition of who we are. And when that definition is gone because of illness, divorce, a loss of a job, addiction, what do we do? 

 

Well, sometimes we run, sometimes, we cry, sometimes we cling desperately to what we knew, refusing to let go. Sometimes we die, whether emotionally or even physically and sometimes, we choose to live in the newness of the experience.

 

My new friend Ethel, the one that lost her voice, says she has become a better listener. She is also on a journey she can now see, several years into the process, as a joy.   She is discovering who she is, in addition to being a former soloist. 

 

Roger Ebert found out he could communicate without a voice. Imagine that.

 

Without question, the transition to the spaces where they are has been extremely painful and difficult.   There is some grieving that has to be done and well, recovery has to take place.

 

We aren’t who we so often think we are. We aren’t our jobs, our positions, and our posture in the community. We aren’t our roles, our public faces. When all that is gone, we simply are.

 

But are what? You are always a beloved creation of God. You are always unique. You are always beautiful in God’s eyes. You are always loved. We are each put on this earth for special and unique purposes.  Celebrate your uniqueness and simply the fact that you are.