Christ Has No Voice But Yours - Understanding the Value of My Voice

Understanding the Value of My Voice

Singing has always been my life’s joy. Even as a child, I never worried while looking at the complex sheet music. I could feel the piano or the organ and was drawn into the blended harmonies that have melted my heart since I was 8 years old. I don’t think anyone has ever known that I can’t read music. Somehow, my voice always knew what to do. Church choirs and Sunday Mass were my sanctuary. Singing taught me how to pray beyond words. Like St. Ignatius, I have often been brought to tears when chords blend in perfect harmony. I understand why he felt the Trinity was present in that perfect sound. For me, they are, too.

Singing taught me how to perform, how to feel confident standing before people, how to connect with them, and those skills moved with me into my professional life in teaching and administration. I found my voice and loved using it to serve my students, their parents, my patients and their families, and my colleagues.

I understood the value of my voice… and then it was gone. My vocal cords were injured some years ago, and gradually my singing voice, once a 3-octave range, is now an uncertain 3 notes. I stand in the pews, silent. Like someone who has lost a limb and experiences phantom pain, I can hear my voice, but only in my head. Tears still flow easily when reality asserts itself, and I remember once again that I can only croak. My singing voice has no value anymore.

This loss happened at the same time I retired, and overnight my professional voice was gone, too. I never equated my self worth with my singing or my leadership positions. Rather, I grieved the chance to touch people’s lives in ways that touched my heart, too. I missed them. Would I be voiceless now because I can’t sing and have no work? It was an existential question with an answer gradually unfolding.

The Spiritual Exercises entered my life soon after these losses, and Jesus stepped in to give me voice lessons. Just before I began that transformative journey, I reconnected with a woman I have known and loved for years in the produce aisle of the grocery store. We had an enthusiastic hug, a quick chat, and then started to go our separate ways. She stopped and returned, surprising me with the tears in her eyes. I put my hand on her arm, and she told me that she had been cleaning out her parents’ things from decades ago. (They had been residents of my nursing home and died in our care.) In a box, she found two notes I had written to her, one when her mother died, the other when her father died. She spoke of rereading them, and said she read them every day for years. My words comforted her then and did again after she found them. She wanted me to know. I listened with tears in my eyes mirroring hers. We hugged as she thanked me for my words.

I would like to say that I remember writing those letters. I wrote many hundreds of them over the 26 years I worked in nursing homes. I would sit at my desk and picture my relationship with the resident who had died and the family member I was writing to. The words flowed easily and helped me offer families a glimpse of the beauty, courage, patience, and humor I had experienced with their loved person. Those notes gave me a chance to express my gratitude and say farewell.

Contemplating the Sermon of the Beatitudes in the Exercises helped me hear Jesus using words that touched individual hearts. Memories of my friend and her parents and many others joined me on that hill. My true voice was always there. Jesus blessed those who mourn but needed me to say the blessing, to be present to the tears until they stilled. I believe that the true miracle on that hill was the blessing of my own mourning.

In the past four years, I have come to know that my voice has an enriched value, and the words spoken from my heart are gifts of the Holy Spirit. They have enabled me to live my various life’s calls in the past. Now I am called to share my voice in new ways with Christ in my remaining years. I am a writer, a hospital chaplain and spiritual director and speak Christ’s presence beyond words, offering comfort as I have been comforted, healing as I have been healed. I wipe my eyes and bow my head in a prayer of gratitude as I hear Jesus say to me, “Feed my lambs for me, Mare…Comfort the fragile ones…the frightened ones…those who mourn. I need your voice, Mare.”

Going Deeper Together:

• Read The Trinity and the Trumpet written by Becky Eldredge.
• Reflect on your gifts and how God might be calling you to use them. Read Beth Knobbe’s article in our past series, The Need is the Call, How Does God Want Me to Use My Gifts?
• Pray with one of our new Individual Paths of Prayer, I Am Worthy of God’s Love: A Grace We Seek Path of Prayer written by Becky Eldredge.

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Photo by John Jennings on Unsplash

Mary Ann Gessner

Mary Ann Gessner has worked with all generations as an art teacher, in Nursing Homes as Recreation Director, Social Services and Admissions Director and Administrator. She was the Director of Admission with a focus on international student recruitment for St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont and holds a BA in Studio Art and Art Education from the University of Bridgeport, CT and a M.S.A. from St. Michael’s College in VT. Since retiring in 2015, Mary Ann has enjoyed the gift of time to nest, quilt, and cook. This gift of time led to Ignatian Spirituality in the Inner Chapel and Becky’s Overwhelmed No More retreat and the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises. Mary Ann is an Interfaith Chaplain and is applying her love of storytelling as a writer. Her two sons have moved gracefully into their adult lives with their families. Mary Ann and her husband still live in the log home they built almost 50 years ago in the woods of Sheffield, Vermont.