Click "Play" on that video and just listen to that song while you read the rest of this blog…thanks 🙂
"Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”
Song of Solomon 3:10-12
Before I knew Jesus, I sang. My voice wasn’t perfect, but I could get by on it. My first semester of college I went out and got myself a job with the Washington Savoyards Opera Company in Washington, D.C. I majored in Musical Theatre, I intended to graduate with that degree, join a touring company for a few years, and eventually teach music and/or theatre.
Beginning in the spring semester of my freshman year of college, I got some sort of weird cold and my tonsils became so swollen that they touched. 11 months and several rounds of antibiotics later, my tonsils were still that swollen. By that time, I had transferred to a better school for Musical Theatre, and I had met Jesus – real Jesus.
I met the Jesus who is madly in love with me, the Jesus who lived and died and rose again just to be with me, the Jesus who is sitting at the right hand of Papa God interceding for me
constantly, the Jesus whose mind is always fixed on me, the Jesus who adores me and calls me precious.
Between the fall and spring semesters of my second year of college, I had a tonsillectomy. Pretty routine procedure, yeah? Well, evidently it’s a little complicated if you’ve had swollen tonsils for a year. My ENT told me at my follow-up appointment that my throat would feel different and my voice would sound different because there had been a considerable amount of scar tissue that made the way he had to take my tonsils out a little less clean than he would’ve liked it to be.
Okay, well, I just had my throat cut open so of course I’m going to sound different. I’ll heal, yeah?
I did heal, but not until after a voice coach had told me it wasn’t a good idea for me to sing for a while because I could injure myself, and not until after I had realized that all the muscle memory my throat had learned as I grew up singing was gone. I changed my major, there was no way I could earn the voice credits I needed as I needed them; and honestly, it broke my heart to hear myself try to sing because it was just SO raw and so different.
Romans 11:29 reads:
“For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable.” (NIV)
“For God’s gifts and His call can never be withdrawn.” (NLT)
“For God’s gifts and calling never change.” (ISV)
Oh, really? …
My voice was completely different, even my speaking voice sounded different. It was uncomfortable to sing. I could manipulate the muscles between my diaphragm and my lips to create any sound I wanted effortlessly before that surgery, but after the surgery it hurt, and it sounded funny. In short, I stopped singing, and I was sure it was a gift that had been revoked.
In my bedroom at home pre-Jesus, my color scheme was basically black and white and a lot of grey. It wasn’t the most joyful place.
Post-Jesus, I have between 3 and 6 shelves on each of the four walls in my room; and each shelf either has a drawing of flowers or a vase of flowers on it at all times. I love flowers. Each of my four walls is also painted a different bright color (you could probably tell that from the photo, though). I love color. In fact, I used to tell people that God spoke to me in colors until I realized that saying it that way doesn’t make sense to most people; but vibrant color and flowers and things that represent effervescent life are things that Papa has used to gently romance me for years.
Well, let me tell you some things about Targu-Mures, Romania:
There are flowers EVERYWHERE.
There are vibrant colors EVERYWHERE.
And God has asked me to sing EVERYWHERE.
See, majoring in Musical Theatre and eventually teaching wasn’t really what God gave me my voice for. His desire is that each of the gifts He gives us is turned back into praise. He’s been telling me so gently this month as He’s romanced me through colors and flowers and picnics and sunsets that His desire is still for me to sing – and He wants me to sing for Him. So I have.
This voice has been in a cage for three years. I didn’t even really know what it sounded like, because I haven’t used it since Papa re-shaped it.
But He makes all things new, and this new thing…haha. This new thing is powerful.
I’ve been leading worship at small Hungarian church in the city this month – the first time I’ve really let people hear me sing outside of a small group of friends since the surgery – and I can’t even describe what it feels like to sing to Yahweh. It’s just me and Jesus, and He’s given me a new song, and He’s going to keep writing it all year, and I’m going to bring it home and be LOUD about it, and it’s never going back in a cage.
Because the gifts of the Lord are irrevocable.
And the time of singing has come.
And the voice of the turtledove (doves represented love in OT cultures, so really, that says “the voice of love” or “the voice of the beloved”) can be heard in the land.
I’m singing to Papa.
