The Right Voices vs. the Wrong Voices

 Growing up, I desired to be the loud popular girl. You know the ones. Standing in the hallways with a group of teenagers surrounding them, they capture the attention of all who hear their story. By the end of the school day, everyone knows what the story is. Since I was quiet and shy, I believed no one heard me. Even though I would spend weekends in another state competing with a Bible quiz tournament and meeting lots of friends, no one knew my story, until a teacher gave me a voice. 

Since those Bible quiz tournaments gave scholarships, my senior English teacher had me explain to my classmates what I had done the weekend before. Once I finished, I realized that my peers enjoyed my story. At the end of the day, people I didn’t even know knew about my extended weekend. The next day, the story went back to the popular girls, but I had my one moment. Reflecting on my “one moment,” I realize that most of us are like high school teenagers who focus on the loud voices and occasionally we hear the voices that project wisdom into our lives. We must turn the occasions of hearing the quiet voices into the majority of what we listen to. 

The people with the loudest voices are not always the right voices that we should listen to or follow. Many times, the loud voices are just noise. They repeat what they hear in the propaganda that they follow. There is no newness or creativity in their words. The soft quiet voices offer wisdom along with empowerment and encouragement. For the past few years, I have had to understand which voices would speak into my life and which voices wouldn’t. 

First, I had to discern between the right voices and the wrong voices. The right voices do not demand. They are not rude. They suggest and they give advice because the right voices have listened first. Wrong voices just want to spout their rightness. Right voices want to speak into your life and bring life into you. 

Next, the wrong voices are always loud. They clap in your face and try to convince you that you are wrong. Many of the wrong voices hide their faces and use their fingers on social media. They scream that if you do not agree with them, they will shun you as they delete you as a friend. It’s a form of manipulation as they are trying to make others question their own perception in life. Manipulation is not a form of a love. Manipulation is not a form of friendship. Allow those people to leave your life and bring into your life the voices that are wise and allow your voice to speak too. 

Finally, the wrong voices do not cheer for you but only speak so they can be heard. They are like those teenagers that want everyone to hear their story and not anyone else’s.  Even though their words may sound correct, and at times they may be correct, they may not be the right words for you or the right time for the words to be spoken to you. You cannot always avoid the wrong voices, but you can drown them out with allowing more of the right voices in your life. 

Take time to discern who those people are that give you wisdom and the best advice for you. Follow the advice of James in the book of James and be quick to listen and slow to speak and follow people who do the same. 

Being Strong in Difficult Times

 “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” That phrase from the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has created a frenzy among people on social media who want to have empathy for those who are hurting. Sometimes life’s disasters do not make us stronger, at least not in the beginning. For those of us who are older and have lived through successes and failures in life, we know that some of our losses have created strength somewhere in our life. If it hasn’t, then we must look on how to be strong in our current circumstance. Maybe, just maybe, we can become strong with our heartaches. 

Taking a page from the college basketball tournament, I have realized that the teams that win are the ones that have something beyond talent. They have tenacity. They have unity, and they have a desire to win. Some teams may think they have a desire to win, but the teams that do win, dig down deep into their souls and create success for every player on their team. It’s not easy to be strong during the tough times. If it were, everyone would be strong, and everyone would win.

Since only the few are strong, we can fall into the trap that we do not need strength to walk in this life. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, NIV) God is commanding Joshua, who must lead the Israelites into the promised land, to be both strong and courageous. Having wandered in the wilderness and leading people who were being disobedient, Joshua had lived through a harrowing ordeal. God is reminding him that with his past, he can be strong because God is with him in his present and then into the future.

Being strong amid a crisis is difficult. Like the college basketball teams, you must rely on someone other than yourself. First, we must rely on God. Most people want God to take the crisis away. It is not what God does. God refuses to control us like robots. Since he doesn’t control us, he also doesn’t control those who may cause chaos for us, in whatever form that may be. He does, however, provide a way for us to move forward. We choose to move forward or to stay stuck in our circumstance. 

Next, being strong requires us to reflect on our lives. We must find tenacity. If we want to be strong, we must look sincerely into ourselves and discover what is holding us back. It could be the wrong people informing us. It could be a wrong job or a wrong relationship. Whatever it is that is making us weak, we must create a way for it to become a strength or eliminate it from our lives. Strength is not just about being physical. We can be strong mentally, emotionally, and spiritually if we are weak physically. 

Third, we must find a way to connect with others. As we connect with others, we must connect with those who speak truth into our lives but speak truth with love. If they just want to say something that proves they are right, then they are not speaking the truth but their own truth, which may or may not be the truth. It has taken me years to listen to the right voices. There are days when the wrong voices still inform me, and I must redirect my actions. The right people who tell you the truth in love and will not be loud. They will speak once. They speak without arrogance. Once we listen with willing ears, we hear the truth. 

So, maybe that philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, from the 19th century gave us words of wisdom. I’m sure that he endured trials that involved physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. The world was not as developed then as it is now. Then again, maybe our well-developed world has created a mess that is making us weaker. Maybe it is not our circumstances that make us weak or strong; maybe it’s our attitude. Like the college basketball teams that will stand in the end, let us find a way to be strong in the times of crisis. 

When Life Roars in Like a Lion, Take It by the Mane!

 

March either roars in like a lion and leaves like a lamb or comes in like a lamb and leaves like a lion. The war in Ukraine. Covid still exists. Winter lingers. This year, March is roaring in like a lion. With all the events that are occurring around us, this year March is roaring in like a lion. As a teacher, March is a marathon. The students are antsy. There are no breaks, and spring is in the air. Throughout my teaching career, I have discovered that once I see the lion coming in March, I must be strong and roar to the end. Then the lamb leads us into April.  

We can fight the lion, or we can roar with it. I choose to roar with the lion. It takes strength to roar. It takes strength to fight. The winter months can weaken our muscles as we attempt to hide from the cold air, but we cannot allow the winter months to weaken us emotionally, spiritually, mentally, or even physically. As struggles come upon us, we must pounce on them as if they are our prey, which leads us to our first step to strength, to pray. 

The first step in approaching the lion is prayer. Prayer strengthens our relationship with God. It creates a faith that brings us closer to God and gives us guidance to move forward from whatever storm we are facing. Storms come and go. Your faith must be stable. When our faith is stable, we can weather the storm. 

In March of 2020, we all faced a lion. We were sent home for a lockdown. Some people, like me, lost their jobs and had to find new jobs all from the convenience of our bedrooms. Others thrived as they learned to navigate working from home and have stayed in that element. Some people chose to leave the work force and stay at home to care for their family and bake bread, or so I’ve heard. Some states were in the lockdown for a few weeks or a couple of months. Others of us were there for a year. It was never about how the leaders treated us. It was always about how we responded to the situation that was thrown at us. 

Connecting with human beings during the lockdown was vital. While listening to a podcast, I realized how much I needed human interaction because social media was full of perfect people with all the answers. If you disagreed with their answers, they screamed at you because they knew you could not harm them physically. What they didn’t know was that their perfections and rightness were harmful. We must interact with human beings in person. 

Along with prayer, we need each other. Isolation harms us socially. We are all broken. Your brokenness can either bring healing or break other people. If you choose to heal one part at a time, the brokenness will heal. If you choose to shout all your rightness, you will break other people. It doesn’t matter if your rightness is right. It matters if you are breaking or healing people. Breaking people causes a broken world. Those of us in the education world are paying for much of that brokenness. If we could understand that all people have lions, we can discover to be kind. We need each other. 

We need each other in church, Bible studies, or even for a coffee meeting. Living in isolation creates an ego within us that brought made our rightness stronger. Physical meetings remind us that humans are more than a name on a screen. Being with other people reminds us that other people have lions roaring within them. We may not be able to calm the lion’s roar, but we can bring peace to the lions that are roaring within others. 

Another way to tame the lion is to admit that we have something roaring, and we must take care of it. You cannot just ignore the chaos that is within you or around you. Ignoring the chaos creates more chaos. Look for ways to resolve the problems. Ask for help. So many people just ask the Internet for help. Ask human beings in person for help. I have to remind myself to ask humans for help. This last summer when we were moving, I was determined to be independent and strong. Once I broke down and asked some of the workers in the apartment complex to help me, the tasks were easier to complete. The roaring lion of moving became possible. 

Finally, to work with the lions in our lives, we must move forward and strive for health. We must eat properly and exercise. I have found fun Disney workout videos that give some semblance of exercise. We must be emotionally strong and rest. We must be strong mentally and continue to learn new lessons and elements in life. With prayer, Bible study, and connecting with other Christians in a church environment, we can grow spiritually. Let’s take the lion by the throat and conquer the month that roars, whether it is in the beginning or the end.