so, I lost my voice
“Mom Jones, how’s your voice today?” Riley asks, pajama-clad and still rumpled with sleep, leaning against the doorjamb in my office, one hand solidly planted on a curvy hip. She straightens, gathering her hair into a ponytail with her other hand, flipping it absently as she watches my face.
“It’s still gone,” I croak, only a hoarse, sand-papery whisper. I look up from my planner, from scanning the day to sort out responsibilities, only to notice the genuine concern etching her pretty face. The worst had happened last week before I lost my voice, but Riley hadn’t known I was sick then. Only Kevin had been privy to my perseverance and my weariness with this cold that, at the time, felt like one more set back in a series.
“Oh no,” Riley says now, her voice going soft and tender, her eyes flooding with tears. “When will you get your voice back?”
I don’t know how much Riley remembers of her silent years, that time when Autism stole away her speech and blunted all expression, but for a while, she lived muted, basically without a voice. During that time, big, pent-up feelings raged in her little body, pouring out of her like sudden storms of grief. So, it makes sense to me that she would grieve the loss of my voice. Paul says that God comforts us in all our affliction, so that we will be able comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received. He doesn’t say we have to be able to remember all the details.
Beyond that, the loss of a loved one’s voice is a famine. Riley’s eyes look sad and also hungry. I get it. Cravings for the sound of Adam’s voice often draw me to him. I wrap my arms around his sharp shoulders and tell him he’s sweet, just to see him grin and hear that deep honeyed voice repeat, sweet.
“Sometimes it takes a week or so,” I tell her, having looked up the answer to that question already. It has been some time since I’ve had laryngitis, and the only thing truly distressing to me about the situation is that I can’t just stop talking until my voice comes back. In fact, I hadn’t really thought, at least not for a very long time, about how much of my life in relationship involves speech. When I lost my voice, I suddenly found myself straining to sustain conversations, to worship, to train my children. I found myself remembering our early days with Autism.
Voices can be lost to many things.
“Oh no,” Riley says again, with even more emphasis, trouble turning her ocean eyes dark and turbulent. Clearly a week with no voice sounds like a very long time to her, maybe because she understands, better than I do, what it’s like to be quiet by challenge and circumstance. It took years for my children to talk.
“Do you need anything?” She asks, wavering in the doorway. She would give me her voice, be my advocate as I’ve been hers, if I asked. In her posture, I see the picture of a proverb: Speak up for the people who have no voice. Of course, Solomon had justice in mind, as he finished with, for the rights of all who are destitute, that is, those without the basic necessities of life, no privilege of comfort, no influence. But hasn’t Riley just drawn exactly that connection? In her heart, to be without a voice is to be in need and without influence, to need someone’s help.
Suddenly I remember Riley’s knotted, mottled face, her baby arm jutting helplessly toward a cabinet high above her head, a grunt jerking her throat. She had been hungry then too and not just for food.
“Not that I can think of just now,” I tell her, feeling so touched by her concern for me that I add, “—It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m okay; I’m going to be okay,” just to erase some of the worry lines from her face.
“That’s good,” she says tentatively, lingering a moment more before retreating to her morning routine, her eyes only reluctantly leaving my face.
She leaves me standing in my office with my hand on my planner, realizing that I am hardly ever so disrupted by the needs of others. Am I just another person passing by on the other side? I stare down at the daily grids, the lists of tasks, but I am really staring at my own reluctance, considering how long it takes me to separate myself enough from my routines to recognize that there are people living near me who have no voice, to understand that they are in need of help. In between the lines, I read the truth. The heart of Christ moves toward the voiceless and marginalized ones, toward the need rather than away. He leans in, as Riley did, utterly moved by compassion.
