It’s become a cliche only because it is so powerful and pervasive.  Your “voice,” I once heard songwriter Pat Terry say, is what makes people say, “That’s a Gary Furr song” or “that’s a (your name here) story.’  I have thought about this for thirty years, focused when I once, during a five day solitary retreat started to say a short prayer I had been using to center myself and blurted out, “Father, help me to be myself.”

If that sounds so very self-centered in our culture already so “you-can-be-whatever-you-want-to-be,” permit me to observe that despite our coaching of selves and self-focus I sure meet a lot of broken ones out there in life.  People wounded and held back by a voice in their head:  “you’ll never amount to anything,” and somettimes not even traumatic voices–just ones we imbibe from our world.  “So many people are better than you.  What do you have to offer?  What’s the point?” Continue reading “Finding Your Voice”