There is a line in Susan Kidd’s “The Invention of Wings”:
How does one know the voice is God’s? Perhaps it was my own voice? Does it matter?
As I read this book and the journey of a burgeoning female abolitionist in it, I think about the parallels between the character, Sarah, and I. How the moments of courage and not-courage move between the words that get stuck in the throat and those that knock around the heart and head.
Within the stillness, I felt an old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be.
For years I felt that way, even after I met my Makers. Every time I thought I had it figured out I would feel stability under my feet and then it’d be yanked, like a slick-backed rug, right out from under me. Little bits and pieces would rise, little teasers to keep me going, pushing me beyond thresholds I never knew I had. I mean, I’ve known the core of it. I’ve said the core of it, the core of me. However, being in the midst of the unfolding and watching it things and myself rise to meet the occasion is not unlike trying to stand on a Bosu ball.
God fills us with all sorts of yearning that go against the grain of the world-but the fact those yearnings often come to nothing, well, I doubt that’s God’s doing.
Oh, the yearning. To be touched, to be touched by human hands in the same way I am those of the gods. To have my hand held, face stroked; to hear a solid voice respond to my own. To not feel the aloneness of isolation from humanity while being directed to heal it. And, no, that’s not God’s doing. It’s my own.
Y’all might want to just get the book. Maybe it’ll help you understand that your voice is the voice of God, in all its intonations, whether you’re hollering or hymning. You are not separate from him. What does that change for you? It’s your judgment about the hollering and hymning, not his or theirs, but what does that change for how you speak to yourself? Does that change how your hear yourself speak to others? And, for you, to what extent does it matter? You’re the judge, no one else.
Speak as if you’re speaking your heart.