Being Quiet

Being quiet is a little bit close to impossible for me. However, my senior year, when my head was bigger than it should have been and I was sure I had every answer, God quieted me.
Just before college auditions, I found I had pushed my voice too far. Between leading a marching band, non-stop practicing for auditions and scholarships, and the heavy stress I was packing on myself, my voice broke. 
I developed two extremely large callouses called nodes on my vocal folds. This impeded their ability to vibrate and make healthy sound. Not only did I loose my singing, but soon my speaking voice was gone too. 
I was devastated. How would I follow my passion of music making? How would I interview for scholarships? How would I give my Salutatorian speech? Why was God sabotaging everything I had worked for?
It was because He was not in it. I had hacked away at the world on my own, determinedly making decisions letting nothing stand in my way. I asked for the will of God as a formality, with very little intention of going any but my own way. Now I was helpless. 
In one single moment, sitting in a scary chair in a sterile office, a doctor told me all my work could be worth nothing now. There is nothing more powerful than the realization that EVERYTHING is now in the hands of God. 
Never have I pleaded with, sobbed to, scolded, and reckoned with my God such as I did those first few weeks. I was broken, I never had been before.
But here is where the sun comes out. I decided I wanted to trust Him. I wanted to walk blindly and trust freely, so I did. I was silent, utterly silent, for two weeks. Silent at school, silent at church, silent at dinner, always such loud quiet. 
I found a person in me that I did not know, I found a desire for Jesus and an inner power welling from the Spirit. I found the truth of all the things I believed could only be fully known in the quiet and the honest.
My Great and Mighty God restored my voice in two months. An impossibility. I auditioned and got a scholarship, a big one. I gave speech, and I laughed out loud again. 
Now, I really use this voice. I value this voice. I raise it is solemn prayer and I raise it in abandoned praise. I will proclaim the goodness of my Jesus and the adoration of my God. Friends, I promise you, miracles happen. They happen daily, and often quietly. Praise God, for you are faithful. I am forever yours.
“Every step we are breathing in Your grace
Evermore we’ll be breathing out Your praise
You are faithful, God, You are faithful” – Never One, Matt Redman