Projecting My Voice

I've been in a succession of church choirs for a long time, since probably fourth grade. And there are certain things that you hear all the time, when you're in a children's choir--most commonly some variant on "I can't hear you!"
The technical term for singing or speaking to be heard by the people listening from the back pews is "projecting your voice," or just "projecting" for short. I've always been good at it. And so, my mom frequently reminded me, the admonishments to "sing louder" and "project more" never meant me.

I wanted to be heard. I love my voice, and it felt good to sing out loudly, but I was always chastised for it, because even though I was so often the only one with the will and the voice to be heard, I wasn't supposed to be so loud. It was worse because there were often microphones, so I would have to quiet my voice further so as not to overpower the amplification systems.

In choir, that kind of point is fair enough, since a choir is meant to be comprised of voices in harmony rather than one loud singer surrounded by a bunch of quiet voices. (That's called a rock band--a valid technique, but not the goal here.) If it had only been in choir, perhaps it wouldn't have left such a mark on my memory. Unfortunately, everywhere else I looked, the same tensions were in effect, repeated over and over again. Don't sing so loud. But I love the way it feels. Don't attract attention. Why not? It's more interesting. Don't sing here! But I sing everywhere else--I communicate better in song. You're supposed to be quiet and obedient. My voice is just loud like that. Children should be seen and not heard. I want to be heard more than seen.

I recognize now, it was all of a piece. I was supposed to grow up to be "normal," or at least easy to ignore. I wasn't supposed to be loud and opinionated, and especially not with unpopular opinions like "I like the body God gave me." (Side note: it's crazy, how much it's discouraged for girls to be happy with how God designs them. Apparently I'm supposed to hate all the little advantages I'm so grateful for, that make simply walking around and existing in my body easier, but why in the world would I?)

 Last year, I acted in a play at a Shakespeare theater--one that didn't have microphones on the stage. And, finally, during rehearsal, the director told me, "Project louder! I want to be able to hear you from the back row."

At first I was shocked and almost offended, but then I realized what she was saying. I was allowed to use the full power of my voice--in fact, I needed to. Be loud. Be yourself. Be heard. Use your gifts, the way they were meant to.

I think everyone needs to hear that, in their own way:

Be who you are, and use what you have, and don't limit your talents because they're too big.

A Brief Parody

(To the tune of "Look Down" from Les Miserables comes a splendid moment from our vacation)

My ears, my ears are suffering because
The wind outside goes THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

My brother's camera's really neat
He likes to take good photographs
Out of the window of our Jeep
Highway speeds sure are really fast

My ears, my ears are suffering because
The wind outside goes THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

Exhausting Week

So this week I'm helping out with my church's Vacation Bible School! After shepherding sixteen to eighteen kids five-year-olds around every morning, I'm pretty worn out by the afternoon, but I have Responsibilities in the afternoons anyway. Sometimes they even get done...

The kids are adorable, though sometimes they get in fights and a few had trouble adjusting to what we were supposed to be doing for the first few days. VBS closing is tomorrow (it's gone so fast!), and thus we wrap up a fun week.

Maybe I should focus on the wisdom that I pick up from the little church rituals that I didn't quite understand when I was five myself. Like what "This Little Light of Mine" actually means, which I hadn't really thought about in years... until now.

Take this light around the world, I'm gonna let it shine

Take this light around the world, I'm gonna let it shine

Take this light around the world, I'm gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Take it around the world? In some ways, even though I never thought of it that way before, that's what I've been doing in making online friends around the world. I get to have deep conversations with people I might never have met otherwise, and I learn something from them, and they learn something from me.

I feel lucky now.

Incoherent Ramblings

Sorry I disappeared for a week without warning; I was off doing disaster recovery work! It was awesome, even though we hadn't exactly expected for a natural disaster to crop up right where we'd been planning to have a mission trip for the past year. I suddenly have a lot more appreciation for the luxuries of life, such as drinking water.

So, I'm not doing too well with following Aunt Mary's advice to write something every day... oh, well. I'll get it figured out. Hopefully things are going to get back to normal soon.


The problem with being me is that I really, really like to share my writing. This works when I'm writing, say, a cute little poem about how much my friends mean to me, but not necessarily quite so well when I want to write about the tough questions in my life. I created this blog as a place to wrestle with the hardest questions... but then I went and told people about it. Sigh. Maybe I should go find some less-exciting place to ask the questions I'm not allowed to ask, like "Who am I?" (The correct answer, in my case, is NOT "Jean Valjean," as awesome as he is. You want my friend Scott for that. Though I would have happily stolen his part, even though I'm a girl and have a very obviously feminine voice... and I couldn't have legally pulled off the shirt-ripping thing he did so well in a high-school play...)


Obviously, I'm rambling. I've been letting myself read again, you see, and my thoughts have gotten all disorganized. Focus, Iuliana.


I've been exploring my own secrets in my mind lately. I feel like I'm compelled to talk about them, because I prayed over Workcamp that I would become a more honest person. Because my secrets are part of me too. Because maybe if I tell the truth, maybe that will make life better for someone in the future, who isn't even born yet, who will need less help to get by in a less hostile world.


But of course I'm a coward, and that's part of who I am as much as anything else too. The truth doesn't come easily to me when I believe that it will put me in danger--and there are truths that will.

No, I didn't finish my homework. I didn't finish my college applications either, or my thank-you notes. I still didn't finish my homework. Actually, I don't understand my homework assignment at all; I was embarrassed to ask for help because then you'd see how little I had managed to accomplish. No, I can't do that--my mind just doesn't work that way.

Those were a few of the more benign ones from the past year, the ones that will only get me called a lazy brat who needs to stop acting like a hermit (and meanwhile I'm hiding in my bedroom because it's the only place I know where I can safely have my own thoughts). There are others that would lose me loved ones. There are others that could cost me my physical safety if they fell into the wrong hands, that have nearly cost others with similar secrets their lives, recently, in my city. 


I hate lies, but I would be lying if I said that didn't scare me.


I guess I'm not going to be able to produce a coherent blog post in my current state of mind (i.e. so tired and hungry as to produce effects nearly identical to intoxication). I hope this is good enough.

"Bring Him Home" and Related Music

It's a little odd for me to listen closely to all the music that's out there about "praying for your soldier to survive," because there's something that's missing. I love these songs--"Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables, "Letters from War" by Mark Schultz, and the first verse of "Pray for You" by Blessid Union of Souls are all beautiful and tender and moving and make me cry every time--but there's still something missing.

I know I'm in the story those songs are trying to tell, that it encompasses me and my brother and John and Carolyn and Amy and Ashley and Kelsey and Alexis and Jacob and Emma and Caroline and Andrew and Peter and thousands more like us, but we're never mentioned in the lyrics. Not even once. I don't know what it is, but, while we're eventually present at the end of the music video for "Letters from War," in the lyrics we're not acknowledged. 

All the praying-for-your-soldier songs I've ever heard focus on the soldier's parents, never children like us who watch our own parents go off on long deployments that in some cases take them into war zones, or like my granddaddy, who at the age of ten on December 7, 1941 literally watched his own father walk into a war zone just outside their house. And I think they're missing something because of it. Not that the parents don't have a worthwhile story to tell, since they absolutely do, but that our story is not any less worthwhile. We have a different perspective, and one that really needs to be told. We are forced to grow up quickly, to get used to living in families that can go from being two-parent to single-parent in a day and back to two parents six months or a year later, and there are families out there where both parents have been deployed at once and the children had to just live with that. We have to get used to grieving very quietly for an entire life we had, everywhere that is familiar and nearly everyone we knew and often a few treasured possessions too, all at once, every year sometimes when we move, and it has to be quiet because even though we don't know if we'll ever see those people and places again, we can't get in the way of moving. And it's all hard on our parents and us at the same time.

On Memorial Day a few years ago, I began a poem about how my father missed my sixteenth birthday because the military wanted him somewhere else on that day. I never could finish that poem, but now I think there's something I have to write along similar but broader lines. And it boils down to this:

The children of those soldiers and sailors and pilots want to bring them all home safely, too.