voiceless but never forsaken pt.1

The Prologue – Hi! I’m sorry I left a lot of you hanging after my last blog post. I truly didn’t get my voice back for another month after that. I wanted to sit down and process some of it and let you in on this testimony the Lord has given me through this experience. This is truly not my story but the Lord’s. I was just the servant that got to walk it out. It was really hard but I wouldn’t have changed it. Why you ask? Romans 12:1 is why and I learned this in a way I never had before…

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

My body and my voice are not my own. My life is not my own. It is all the Lords and he chose this time to make me mute for his glory and his careful teaching. It’s crazy I know! This story gets even crazier so let me try to piece it together the best I can. It seemed easiest to write it in a story with chapters and some of it from my journal. It’s not everything but a lot of what I learned and experienced. The good, the bad, and honestly some of the ugly. Buckle your seat belt and grab your popcorn!

Chapter 1 – The Mysterious Disappearance                                                                                                                  Craiova, Romania. December 17th, 2023. A lot of people ask me what happened. I truly do not know and when I say my voice vanished, it did. Kinda like poof. I had been really sick about 4 days before and this was the first day that I had gotten out of the mission house, where my whole squad stayed, for the whole day. I had gotten coffee with the lovely Teresa, my team was doing the sweetest team time (it was a gratitude photo challenge), and we had kids club in the morning with Amy, which was my favorite. It was a really good day and we were going to finish it off with the usual youth night. 

Youth night was when we invited all the youth we met that week to have a youth group-style event. It was usually really packed but really fun! This night we even had balloon animals! I showed up and my voice just started to leave. It felt like I couldn’t clear my throat at first and my voice was just suppressed. I tried drinking water and clearing my throat. Nothing worked and it just got worse. My throat didn’t hurt either so it was odd. I was like I lost my voice! It had never happened to me before and was confusing because I hadn’t been screaming or straining it in any capacity. I ended up doing some treasury work in the back room during the event with some worship music. 

After the event, we had squad dinner. This was also one of my favorite things! The whole squad got to eat dinner together and then we did feedback at the end. It was a sweet time to point out what we saw in each other from the week. This one for me was the beginning of a confusing time and the first taste of what I would be walking through. I was in a circle of people but I couldn’t communicate with them. I went to bed thinking that my voice would return but when I woke up, I still couldn’t speak. I started my new line of communication with my roommates, which was via paper airplanes. It was ok in the beginning because it will come back soon right? I had no idea what was in store for me. 

Chapter 2 – It’s Really a Thing                                                                                                                                    December 26, 2023. My team left Craiova, Romania for the next 10 days of ATL. In my mind, I was for sure going to have had my voice before this but the days just kept turning into weeks at this point. I walked through Christmas with no voice. My favorite holiday but never did I think that I would have to celebrate it silently. It was a really special Christmas with my whole squad. Full of love and the true meaning of Christmas. We had this combined knowledge of worshipping this baby born for our salvation. It was simple yet so beautiful! I saw a whole different perspective in the silence. I mean the first Christmas was quiet and really simple. Peaceful.

Back to the story. We took off on a train to Brasov, Romania with no idea where we would stay. This is a separate blog story and some of my 247 family (Kara and Lexy) have written some really amazing blogs over this time. For me, it was just a really hard time in general but for different reasons. I was lost in my mind at this point in the journey. Weeks of being trapped had caused me to feel really claustrophobic and I was learning to surrender to what was happening. It was a time when I didn’t even really try to communicate. I didn’t fight for words because I thought I can push through till it comes back. This train ride is where it all really sunk in for me. This was not going away anytime soon. Jordan J. had said from the beginning that this was something the Lord was going to use. We all knew this but I didn’t want to accept that. That’s not fun. I really didn’t till several weeks later. 

Chapter 3 – Strip me back                                                                                                                                                  Brasov, Romania. December 29, 2023. The Lord had been so kind to me. He provided a place for me to rest for 3 days and to recover physically, mentally, and spiritually. Several days before we had just gotten to Brosov, where we felt the Lord had called us. On the train, we found housing for one night. The next day we had to find new housing. We went in obedience to a park to wait for the Lord to move. I’ll be honest in all of this moving that day, I was just a shell of a human. At that point, I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I had lost my fight. The Lord had striped and broken me to what felt like a place of such vulnerability and dependence. From my journal…

“I don’t have a voice to express how broken I feel. I’m just tired and I’m tired of not speaking, I’m tired of trying to speak. The efforts seem in vain these days.”

In the park, Kara sat me down and said she was worried about me. I then said, in my whispers, that I was worried about myself too. I told her I gave up and I can’t fight anymore.. She fought for me and held my arms up like Aaron did for Moses in the battle against the Amalekites. She walk alongside me in my vulnerable state and was there in so many ways. The Lord helped me see that I didn’t need to do this all alone and showed me the beauty of community. 

In that park, the Lord moved big. We had a really crazy cool connection to a family that housed us for several days after just meeting us the night before (I am not doing this justice to how incredible this family was and how the Lord worked in this time). They opened their home to us, their family to us, and loved on us. My team really got to dive in deep with them and it was so sweet. I was able to have a space to dive in deep with the Lord. I was sick at this point and was dealing with a lot of adrenal fatigue. I physically could not keep going on and coming to terms with this was really hard for me. I have always been a really independent performance-driven person. I wrestled through this with the Lord during this time. I wrote this…

“I’m having a hard time in my mind. I can’t voice anything. I have no opinion. I do feel like the Lord is trying to break my will. My body is not functioning well at all. I can’t even explain to my team what I need or what’s happening. I have no voice. People can’t hear the gospel through me. I then ask myself “what am I good for” It’s a lie but it still goes through my head. I know I am not forgotten and I am seen. This is just hard. This is me…“My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be: I walked among the crowds of worshipers, leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of a great celebration!” Psalms‬ ‭42‬:‭4‬ ‭NLT‬‬. It use to be me in the crowds and singing. Now it is not.”

There is a song by Citipointe Worship that goes “strip me back of all my pride and my possessions, till all I want and all I seek is your presence” and this is exactly what I felt in this state I had been brought to. Everything felt swept out from under me and I felt the Lord was shifting my foundation to align cracks in it. This is where the Lord wanted me to be. A place where he could expose the performance-based lies I had based my worth in. This is a text message I sent to one of my teammates about it…

“The song that goes “strip me back of all my pride and my possessions till all I want and all I seek is your presence” That’s how I feel. Maybe that’s the place where I am supposed to get to. I feel quite vulnerable a lot of the time. I have truly been stripped of my performance. I can’t perform in any capacity really which is so hard for me. I just have to be and be loved. In front of God, in front of other people, and even me. I am just being loved. So that’s an interesting concept and quite humbling.”

It was truly humbling. This was a huge lesson for me that I learned. You see for my whole life I have felt like I had to earn love or I had to do something to be loved. The concept of just accepting love, unconditional love, was foreign to me until last spring. The fact that just breathing is enough for the Lord to love the guts out of you was incomprehensible. I asked the Lord this day “How am I glorifying you like this in this state?” his response was that just spending time with him was glorifying him. He loved it. We were made for him. The point of our creation was to glorify and to be with him in the garden. Before the fall, God walked with Adam and Eve. That type of communion is still possible and the desire of our creator! It is not earned through performance but given from love. It doesn’t matter how many times you share the gospel or how many bibles you pass out. We are privileged to get to be a part of the master plan God has for restoration but it doesn’t make him love us more. Don’t hear me wrong. We should do these things but out of the love we have for God and not because we have to. 

Another piece of this love thing I learned is that people love me like this too. My team loved me so well! There was nothing I did but the fact that me just being there was enough for them to love me. They saw me well and fought for me. They fought for my words when I didn’t want to give them, they fought to communicate with me, they fought in prayer for me, and for the space I needed to heal. The family that housed us, fought for a voice that they had never heard. They loved me and truly they never got to hear me speak or know a ton about me. Yet they still cared for me and loved me with a love that only comes from God. 

This concept still blows my mind but is such a beautiful thing! This is because love comes from God. “We love because he first loved us,” 1 John 4:19. In this kingdom lifestyle, love is upside down from the tainted concepts we have learned from the world. The Bible says “God is love!” If God is perfect then we get this perfect example of love to follow and give. “ If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” the NLT says that “his love is brought into full expression in us.” We get to love in the full expression of his love when we love others like Jesus. We get to receive the full expression of God’s love when we are loved in this way. I say all this to say that this love is wild and that I learned I can accept the love from other people. In all of this, I was loved really well. It’s a whole new game we play when we love from first being loved, by God and others. I’m grateful I get to walk in this now. 

Stay tuned for the next chapters…

With Love,                                                                                                                                                                           Morgan Kate