Let Your Voice be Heard

“I don't have a choice. This is the way God made me.”

I looked incredulously at my friend. Inside of me, I felt dissonance with what she was saying. I agreed that she was created by God but was pretty certain she was shrugging off responsibility for some behavior by saying she had no agency in the matter.

God made us to have agency. We have the power to make choices and take actions that shape our experiences.

Jesus made a habit of encouraging people to exercise their agency by asking people what they wanted. He gave them a clear choice. Several times, he even asked blind people what they wanted him to do for them. This should have been obvious, but for Jesus, well, he never assumed. He wanted them to choose their healing. We’d all feel consistently trapped if we felt we had no choice, no voice.

Etty Hillesum, a brilliant young woman in the prime of her life, was sent off to Auschwitz, where she was murdered for being a Jew. This untenable situation shines to be the ultimate in having no agency, but a postcard that she’d scribbled and thrown from her death train said, “We left the camp singing…” In the days leading up to her arrest, she wrote in her diary, “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.” Imprisoned in body, Etty made a choice about who she would be internally. She chose internal freedom.

We, too, have a choice. I was once told that “it's a good thing I can sing because I have nothing to say.” This recording played in my head for a long time and kept me trapped. It kept me from realizing my God-created capacity to be someone who actually did have something to say. I had a voice! Healing came to me and continues to come to me when I take agency and use my voice as God intended, instead of staying quiet as if I have no thoughts on a matter.

I hear God’s invitation to me when I hear the loud Carolina Wren who perches her chubby, jaunty self on the fence outside my window. Come with confidence, open your mouth and let your voice be heard. You have been given agency.

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