This weeks letter was birthed out of sorrowful tears as I woke up with a sore throat this morning. Not something to cry over but it may make sense with a little context. At the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, I started to struggle with my voice. I was traveling for my job constantly which required a lot of talking and I was singing on average about 3x per week for my church. During that time around fall of 2023, I felt myself losing my voice more often than usual but I would push through it (bad idea). When I was home for a break for the holidays, I attended a Christmas Eve service with my family no different than I had before. I felt my voice strain a bit but didn’t think much of it. The next morning, I would wake up in a world of pain that would send me going to doctors months on end. And still I have issues to this day. I learned I have a lot of outdoor/ seasonal allergies. that helped with some of my pain, thankful for Zyrtec. But over the course of 2024, I was in doctors’ offices more than I liked. I was sad when tests came up negative cause I just wanted to understand what was happening to my body. it was a blessing it wasn’t worse but not knowing was really hard. At one point, through a series of test they said my kidneys were functioning like an old person! What did my kidneys have to do with my voice, I had no idea.

As I tried to make sense of this new found issue, one physician asked if I had changed anything such as adding strenuous exercise. At the time I had been lifting weights 3-4 times per week consistently since around August 2023! she said how strenuous activity over a short period of time could be rough on the kidney. I was so afraid and scared, I stopped working out cold turkey. Luckily I learned when you gain a large amount of muscle mass over a short period the normal test that measures kidney function may not work because it doesn’t factor in increased muscles mass. When I went to a kidney specialist, she told my she treated a US gymnasts with the same issue; they have a lot of muscle so the normal test comes out skewed. So she gave me a test to more accurately test my kidney function and it was great! By no means am I an olympic athlete, but the example helped me understand what was going on in my body after committing to weight lifting! Unfortunately, today since I stopped working out completely all that muscle is gone and I need to again start from scratch but I am thankful for the knowledge I learned.

Finding Some Answers

I was thankful that my kidneys were functioning but the other issue was that I couldn’t eat normally. When I would eat I would start to notice that my throat would be in a lot of pain afterwards. I went to an ENT doc got meds but it continued to happen. They said I may have candida overgrowth and thus started my very bumpy journey of trying the candida diet. The candida diet removes most carbs and sugar form the diet to help heal the gut. Its like eating raw food and just removing all the processed sugar .I started noticing it felt like my throat was inflamed after eating carbs or sugar and I mean even healthy carbs! So I removed a lot out of my diet but you can imagine that would be a hard one to follow. So I would go crazy on processed foods but even the healthy processed food would give me a reaction. thankfully in the fall of 2024, I went to a vocal specialist and he took a look at my vocal chords- which I should have went to in the first place. I learned my vocal chords had a small bump on it and was partially open. When we speak, our vocal fold should be closed. My vocal chords looked like an hour glass, open on the top and bottom and closed in the middle. The good news was that it could be healed with vocal therapy. The bad news I truly had to learn how to speak different and take a break from my love of singing. I would love to tell you I am perfectly healed now; but I am not. I changed jobs and had to change medical plans and so I have delayed going up for a check up on said vocal chords. I was great at my vocal exercises for a time but fell off! This part is my fault and its been hard not to be discouraged. But I am thankful I am in a place to have the right medical care to take care of myself. And not to worry, I am headed back to practicing my vocal exercises so that I could get my voice back to its full capacity

My Voice & The Church

My voice and not singing has revealed to me the other gifts in me I have neglected. it has also made me realize how much I neglected the care of my own voice and self. Over the course of the year as I have reflected, I realized I should have never joined my church choir. I never prayed about it but joining felt like my normal busy body self in church. After experiencing church hurt a few years back, going to church has never felt the same. It has been hard integrating back into church, I have so longed to feel what I felt before church hurt. But the me now is so much better, less judgmental, more empathetic and still wrestling with God as is necessary to do at times. It’s amazing he still loves me and even more I Him; I expected my experience to take me away from God but it has only drawn me closer; and for that I am eternally grateful! I will speak more on church hurt another day. joining the choir made me feel like I could be the christian I was before the church hurt. A large part of me grieves that old me dearly. but another part says, how would I have grown to Learn and wrestle about what good means when god says He is good? How else would I learn if my faith was as genuine as I said if there was no storm to test my foundations? this whole process of losing my voice, not being able to sing as well as I prided myself to be has humbled me. It has make me ask so many questions and questions make your mind work. it makes you seek answers.

Final Thoughts

I could go on and on, but I will end with this. I am not completely healed yet of my voice. I still have reactions to food and I am unsure of the reasons. While there’s somethings in this season worth grieving, I think I will look fondly on the hard fought lessons I gained from this season. I have gained a new appreciation for health and wellness and care about what I eat; even if it wasn’t from a pure desire to learn. Pain pushed me in the direction my body needed to go. I have a desire to get well and when I do will have such appreciation for the things I daily took for granted. I will never understand why its life’s hardships and struggle that refine you. By hardships, I am not talking about abuse of any kind or struggle love but the curve balls life throws at you. They have a way of breaking you but also building something new in you that you could not otherwise imagined.