Love Gives Us Voice

I once talked to a teenaged girl who had been emotionally neglected by her father and physically abandoned by her mother. She felt so discarded and alone that she had no sense at all of her worth. In her eyes, her facial expression, and her posture, I could see that she felt like an insignificant piece of garbage. She curled up in her chair, knees to chest, and was unable even to look at me as I spoke.

I asked her a question about herself. No response. I tried another two questions. Still nothing. I reached out and touched her knee, leaving my hand there for quite some time without any expectation that she would respond in any way.

"I know that it's difficult for you to speak," I said. "You're in a great deal of pain, and you have been for a very long time. Is that not true?"

Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

"And in this moment, how do you feel?"

After a pause that seemed like the end of the conversation, she squeaked—in the tone and pitch of a mouse—"Better." Only barely could I understand the word she had spoken.

"More peaceful?"

She nodded.

"How else do you feel?" I asked.

"Safe," she said, and there followed the slightest smile, but one that lit up the room. Step by step we had a conversation initially distinguished by almost indecipherable squeaks and squeals that escaped reluctantly from her lips. Eventually, she spoke longer sentences, unburdening and cleansing her soul.

This tender child was rendered mute by fear. She was so occupied with protecting herself, that who she really was simply disappeared under the bristling armor of silence. But then the anticipated attack did not occur, nor the abandonment. Nobody told her she had to be different. Nobody coerced or even persuaded her. I just loved her, and she felt it. The need to protect herself was gone, so gradually she expressed her genuine feelings and thoughts.

It is love that gives us voice. It is love that frees us from the chains that imprison who we really are. We must trust in the power of that love, rather than trying to get what we want from others by all the other means available to us—intimidation, guilt, persuasion, anger, and more.