Editor’s note: For the past nine months, while the regular blog editor has been on maternity leave, CBE intern Mayzie Mayfield has been at the helm of Mutuality. She is now wrapping up her time at CBE to focus on finishing her seminary degree, leaving us much the poorer for her absence. This piece is her (temporary, we hope!) farewell.
I am currently exposing my toddler to Disney music. It’s driven as much by nostalgia as it is by my joy when a song resonates with her, because she has started that funny, arhythmic dance toddlers do. Her eyes brighten just before she closes them, sticks her hands out in front of her, and twists her little torso back and forth—a dance for her own self, an expression of her own delight. As her mom, I brim with love and happiness to watch her express herself in this way. This week, “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” from The Little Mermaid, showed up on the playlist. It’s Ursula the villain’s[1] big number. She is persuading Ariel, the titular little mermaid, to sign away her voice in order to become a human and experience true love with Prince Eric. Ariel is mad at her father and rashly agrees to the deal, never mind the consequences.
On a recent listen, the idea of those unexamined consequences stuck in my head. Just before Ursula names her price, she describes Ariel’s voice as “just a token, really, a trifle. You’ll never even miss it!” Ursula is persuasive trickster in addition to being a powerhouse vocalist, barely giving Ariel time to process this price. Ursula not only desires Ariel’s isolation from her family and friends but also her isolation from self-expression. Ultimately, Ursula wants control of Ariel (who happens to be her enemy’s favorite daughter). When Ariel wavers, Ursula doesn’t give the young mermaid a chance to process the price, intimidatingly repeating, “It won’t cost much—just your voice!”
“Just” Your Voice?
When you are pregnant, people share how sweet it will be to hear your baby giggle or say “mama” for the first time. My daughter, Shiloh, has a speech delay and currently lacks strong verbal ability. I have experienced no grief like waiting for my daughter to giggle or say her first word, before realizing that her speech would not develop typically. I desperately longed for any meaningful sound so that I could learn more about my girl. When my husband and I realized that Shiloh’s speech was delayed, we figuratively and literally bent ourselves toward her communication needs. If she could not talk, we would learn how and what she was communicating! Our spirited girl speaks through body language and American Sign Language (ASL). She babbles with emotion and intonation, including her own language of grunts, which express everything from approval to hunger to a demand to change the song on the radio. We met our daughter where she was because her ability for self-expression is that precious to us, her unique voice worth nurturing and understanding regardless of how it was expressed.
All that said, perhaps it is unsurprising that the phrase, “It won’t cost much—just your voice” has remained in my thoughts. What is the value of a voice? What does my daughter’s voice represent, especially from a maternal perspective? I don’t need my daughter to talk, necessarily; rather, I want my daughter to express herself however she is able, whether through speech, ASL, or augmentative language devices.[2] If art, dance, or poetry are the forms of self-expression available to her, I want my daughter to share her full self. As her mother, I cannot fathom wanting anything different—and this is where God got my attention.
The journey of cultivating my daughter’s voice has triggered the times my own voice has been undervalued, mistreated, distorted . . . described to me as “just a token, merely a trifle,” so that someone else—typically a male authority figure—could control it. As a girl, I felt called to vocational ministry (as much as a child can be) and was given the options of missionary or pastor’s wife. I loved talking about Jesus, was curious, and displayed leadership skills, but I was essentially told, “God gave you a voice and gifts, but you can only use them to talk about God in this particular way, and about these particular topics.” Anything in me that resisted this message or the roles laid before me was labelled “sin” and “rebellion”—the desires of a girl who was too smart for her own good and wanted to be in charge. Over time, this taught me to distrust my voice, my self-expression, and the very Holy Spirit inside of me. If I didn’t subscribe to what the spiritual authorities in my life said, then I must be in the wrong. My dearest desire was to obey Christ, and I had been told that this meant “dying to self”—an idea that is not actually found in Scripture.[3] Instead, I learned to ignore myself entirely, and in doing so, I hindered how the love of God could be uniquely expressed through me! Most heartbreaking to me now as a relatively new mama is the fact that God had to watch as my voice was distorted by the culture and people who claimed to serve God. If I feel such desire to see my daughter express herself, if I so delight in however she communicates, how much more does God delight in my use of my voice, God’s own image expressed through me?
Take a Gulp and Take a Breath
I am far from the only woman who was spiritually formed in an environment that wanted to control her. Patriarchy offers a raw deal, essentially the same as the one Ursula offers Ariel: “. . . you’ll have your man. Life’s full of tough choices, isn’t it?” While patriarchy may not guarantee women a man (though marriage is generally part of the deal), it does tell women that safety, belonging, and a sense of control are available to those who use their voices in the prescribed way. In a world as uncertain as ours, where women are still treated as second class in every society, that offer of security is enticing. We also witness what happens to women who go off script: social isolation, loss of job opportunities, and, yes, fewer men who view her as a valuable romantic partner if that is something she wants.
Until my mid-twenties, I tried so hard to make complementarian theology make sense because those were the waters I swam in. I could have approval, doctrinal certainty, and “assurance of salvation.”[4] Most frustratingly, an easier path to vocational ministry was available in my denomination. I could not be a pastor, but a network and other job opportunities were available if I was willing to betray that part of my voice. I saw my options and knew there would be a certain ease if I would “take a gulp and take a breath,” as Ursula urged Ariel, to “go ahead and sign the scroll.” But I couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s because I was young and naïve, or felt emboldened by the women around me, or finally had friends outside of my specific faith context who embraced their full voices. But I thank God for how these circumstances worked together, and for organizations like CBE that amplified voices who said what I needed to hear: The harm I had seen and experienced was real. My voice matters, and God’s delight in me is not bound by “complementarian” gender roles. I did have a place to belong, and it was in God’s Kingdom, alongside these other advocates for biblical gender equality. I am so grateful that CBE has allowed me to be part of this very work for the last eleven months.
Neither a Token nor a Trifle
Humorous as it may be, Alan Menken’s self-expression through the lyrics of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” has turned out to be significant to my spiritual life in this season. His music evokes emotion and memory, as so much art does. Our world is richer because of artists’ self-expression.
My daughter cannot talk (yet), nor is she a musician (yet?), but her love for the world and our neighbors grabs my attention each day. Her smile, her claps, her hands thrown in the air and head tossed back when we step outside bear witness to the beauty of our world. I’d be remiss not to listen.
Now that I’m learning to nurture my voice, my prayer is that even my way of seeing the world will point to a God who loves us: a Mother who longs for us to express ourselves for Her glory and a Creator who sees the voice of each human as necessary to the tapestry of His creation.
Friends, your voice is a unique part of the image of God in you. God wants to express Herself through us in the world, and when we sign away our voices for security, it is not only the world that misses out, but also the eternal Kingdom of God. If the maternal desire I have for my daughter’s voice echoes God at all, then God grieves deeply at an unused voice. And yet God will bend toward you, coaxing out your voice in a myriad of ways—through art, ASL, augmentative tools, and speech—because God is endlessly creative. If someone offers you security, belonging, or approval at the cost of your voice, you can say, “No, thank you.” Because you belong, in God’s Kingdom, with us. We’re so happy you’re here.
[1] Interestingly, there would not be another female antagonist in a Disney musical until Tangled in 2010. (The Little Mermaid was released in 1989.)
[2] According to the American Speech and Hearing Association, an augmentative language device (AAC) is any way someone communicates other than by talking. This can be writing, drawing, pointing to pictures, or even a tablet that speaks!
[3] Paul talks about dying to sin (Rom. 6:11), the flesh (Rom. 8:13), or the Law (Rom. 7:4), and Jesus talks about denying oneself (Matt. 16:24) and about being born again (John 3:3–8), but dying to self—as if it is the “self” that is bad, rather than the sin nature—is never asked of Christians. The idea of “dying to self” is easily manipulated partly because that precise phrase never actually appears in the Bible.
[4] This was my denomination’s phrase for knowing you were saved; a way to talk about God’s full stamp of approval.
Photo by Carly Kewley on Unsplash.
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