The inability to sing, it hurts my heart!
Coming out of my first surgery, I knew that it was a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to speak at all. I was somewhat prepared for it and praying hard that it wouldn’t be the case.
My dad often says that the first thing I said when the elevator doors opened and I saw him was ‘I can speak’.
I’m grateful to the surgeons for choosing not to take my vocal cord nerves and instead scraping them to get the Tumors off. After all, it left me with a voice at all.
However, the fact that they even had to make that choice has left me in some ways devestated.
I think it’s been an area that I have been avoiding to deal with for a while and always made somewhat light hearted comments about. I have had some successes… but also major blows.
And none bigger than the one this past week.
Let me back up a bit and tell you why me keeping my voice was so incredibly important to me.
Anyone who knows me, or maybe has known me while I was growing up, will be able to tell you that music was a HUGE part of my life, especially singing.
I sang in every choir I could from children’s choir, to the occasional youth choir song, to church choir, to group songs, to choir concert tours, to solos, to regular church service singing. My friends and I would stay up whole nights, print off lyrics to songs, divide them up and record ourselves singing. The PlayStation game Singstar was the kicker in our house. Once Melissa got great at piano playing, we would spend hours at the piano singing and sometimes even writing our own music.
In short, music was a major part of every day.
Its my number one of connecting to God. It’s my number one way of praising Him. I will often start a prayer in the middle of the song or make the song my prayer.
And now it’s gone.
This past week some of our friends met together for a worship evening, just to sing a few songs together, the kind of thing I would have jumped on for being a part of before.
Now, to be honest I was a little hesitant at first if I even wanted to go. Don’t get me wrong in the end I am so glad I did, but it also opened up a wound I was trying so hard to keep shut.
I knew from the get go that losing my voice may be a complication of this whole thing happening to me. However we prayed so much that I wouldn’t lose the ability to speak. But I can’t honestly say I remember us praying that I wouldn’t lose the ability to sing before I went in for surgery.
The first couple of weeks when my voice was a bit hoarse, I just assumed it was from being intubated since I see that a lot at work. As radiation then started and my voice completely left me, even speaking was only in whisper form possible for a while, the effects of everything started to show more. As well as start to become more permanent.
Its now coming up to 2 Years since my diagnosis and my voice will probably never be the same again. It may not even improve much from what it’s at right now.
The night we met for our worship night, I started singing in the kitchen while cleaning up a few things left from dinner until I heard this weird squeaky noise and didn’t understand where it was coming from, until I realized I was making that noise. My voice had just left me I was still saying the words and singing the notes, but what came out was something completely different.
That first realization hit me straight in the chest.
But I promised myself to not let this get me down, so I sat down and kept singing. Often times dropping down an octave, attempting to sing alto and also just as often feeling like I was singing completely off key. Or stop singing all together until the pressure in my throat would ease up and I could trust myself to at least get one note out,
By the time the night was over, I felt refreshed from the worship but also completely devastated on the inside.
My heart often cries out to God: ‘Why did you have to take THIS away from me?’
Anytime I have these thoughts I have to think of the story of Job. I am tempted to think that God took this away from me, because of my Pride. I used to be so proud of my ability to sing (even writing this admission is a hard thing for me). I know pride had a huge hold of me, especially in this regard.
Jobs friends call him out saying: “If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents. Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish; you will be secure and will not fear.” (Job 11:14-15 ESV). Basically they’re telling him that there must be sin in his life for God to let this happen and if he puts that part away God will restore him. But really the answer to this question is given in the first chapter of the Book of Job, when Satan has to come to God and ask for permission to go against Job (Job 1:9-12). God doesn’t make these things happen to Job. He simply gives Satan permission. And Satan goes full force taking his house, his cattle, his sheep, everything he owns, his children, until he takes Jobs health.
But really God didn’t do any of these things to Job. He just said to Satan ‘You’ll see. You think taking all of this away from Job will make him curse me. But I know my son. He will be faithful’. And Job is!!
I don’t understand why my voice had to be a casualty of this cancer. Maybe it was to teach me different ways to worship, maybe it was to make me less prideful, maybe I don’t even know the reason yet and maybe I won’t find out this side of heaven.
But God isn’t a God who punishes as I would deserve for my pride. If he did, Jesus wouldn’t have come.
“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”
Psalms 103:10
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—” Ephesians 2:4-5
Even though it hurts, and it hurts deeply, I want to trust in Him who has a plan for my life. One day I will sing to him in Heaven, when I will receive a fully new body, with a new voice. A voice worthy of praising and singing in the presence of God.
