You mouthed the high note

When did you last sing a whole song out loud, start to finish? Maybe at birthdays you mouthed the high line and let everyone else carry it. Maybe someone told you that you had a great gravelly voice, and you took it as a compliment. What else do you do with a fact about yourself? You filed the rasp under personality.

Smoking put your throat through it, over and over. Tissue that gets irritated that often can swell, and swollen tissue sounds rough. So part of that rasp may have been irritation wearing your name. The cigarette roughed up your voice and passed the damage off as character.

Irritated tissue can heal. You might catch it over the laundry, humming without thinking, and the note's just there. Or you read something out loud and the words come out clean, no throat clearing between them. That's freedom you can hear with your own ears.

Today, sing one whole song out loud. Every verse. The high part too, cracks and all. Then give God one sentence the same way, out loud, in your own voice. It's me, Lord, out loud this time. He knew that voice before the rasp ever showed up. Next time someone asks when you last sang, you've got an answer. Today.