The Voice by Sandi Patty

Author:Sandi Patty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2018-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

Pointe Shoes

As I asked God to reframe truth in my life, I began to feel a little bit more comfortable with the risk of exercising my voice and speaking my opinion. It was like trying out what would soon become my favorite comfortable pair of shoes, but first they were giving me huge blisters, and I didn’t know if the pain and effort would be worth it. But the godly women who came into my life through BSF and counseling encouraged me to speak my voice. Try it out. Build up some calluses over those tender blisters.

My daughter Anna studied dance for many years. I remember the day she was finally ready to get her first pair of pointe shoes. Ah, pointe shoes—the end game for any serious dancer. It just didn’t get any better than pointe shoes! She was so excited as we went to the store and she tried on a few. The expert who fit her for these special shoes gave her some pointers (ha—couldn’t resist the pun!) on how to get comfortable in these shoes.

“Anna,” the shoe specialist said, “these are going to take some getting used to. You’re going to want to throw them away the first week. Your toes are going to hurt. Your ankles are going to ache. You are going to get blisters that will feel like they are never going to go away. You will even think about giving up your dream of being a ballerina. But it’s worth it.”

Sure enough, Anna got blisters that hurt so bad she was in tears at the end of dance practice. But those blisters toughened and became calluses. And Anna toughened up along the way, too. She understood that to achieve her dream, there had to be some pain involved. To this day, she takes great pride in those well-earned calluses. She refuses to get a pedicure because, as she says, “Mom, I have earned these calluses, and I don’t want anyone scraping them off. They remind me that I can work hard and push through.”

Yes! Let’s hear it for ballet pointe shoes! Let’s hear it for trying something new and allowing it to be uncomfortable—or even painful—for a while. Let’s hear it for the people in our lives who cheer us on. “You’ve got this, girl. It’s gonna be worth it.”

That is what it was like for me to start uncovering my voice. Often, I’ve learned, the first thing that happens is that the people who have been around the voiceless person will look at her like she’s crazy. “Wait, did you just say that?” The second thing that happens is that people will rejoice with you or they will rebel against you. The ones who rebel want things to stay the way they were. They’ll actually escalate their domineering or bullying behavior to try to get you to go back to your silent ways. I confess, when others did this to me, there were times I was tempted to go back into hiding.

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