Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.

“Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.”

I have always wondered who said that, as I often repeat it back at myself before I muster the courage to speak. As I find myself doing quite often lately.

The most recent time being last night. Dustin and I were celebrating the first days of Spring in Athens by taking our pup on a walk downtown and getting bubble tea. As a gorgeous sunset faded in the background, a middle-aged man and his son set up a sign that read:

If you are a sinner you are:

of the Devil

an enemy of God

a slave to sin

on your way to HELL (with the words Hell on fire of course)

the other side of the sign then listed all of the people groups that were going to hell, which seemed to be  just about all of them.

His son, a boy of maybe 17 kept his eyes downcast, as his Father shouted to everyone around that they were going to hell, focusing most of his hatred on some women across the street that waited in line for a show called “Magic Men” which is apparently a live version of “Magic Mike.”

“You’re all going to hell. Your husbands shouldn’t have let you out the house. You should be at home making sandwiches for your husband and caring for your children,” he screamed into his microphone so that the women couldn’t ignore him.

Then he went on to say that Trump had saved us from the devil of Barrack Obama, and saved us from the wicked witch Hilary Clinton. Around this time people on the street had started to argue and yell back at him, so instead of engaging in the melee Dustin and I walked around the UGA campus and let people pet Nellie.

On our way back to the car, I saw that the”preacher” and his son were still there, and I felt like I was supposed to talk to the son. I wanted him to know that I saw him and that God was actually quite loving, despite what his father was saying.

I walked up to the son and asked him if I could speak to him. He stared at me, it felt like he was afraid to speak or not allowed to.

That’s when his father descended upon me. I turned to him and smiled, “I don’t think you are doing a very good job telling people who God is.”

“Who are you to speak to me? What do you know?”

“Well, I’m a Christian too, and I think you’re pushing people a lot further away from God -”

Before I could finish, he looked me up and down, his gaze lingering a little too long on my body and the summer dress I was wearing and said, “You’re not a Christian. I can tell you’re not a Christian by what you’re wearing. If you were a Christian you wouldn’t be showing your arms and breasts. You’re going to hell.” He made sure he was speaking into the microphone he had, so he could publically shame me.

Knowing from his previous comments that he might believe I was a Christian if my husband vouched for me, I responded. “But I am a Christian, just ask my husband.”

Dustin replied, “she’s the most Godly woman I know-” before he could finish the man interrupted Dustin.

“You’re not a Christian either. If you were, you wouldn’t allow your wife to speak. What does the Bible say? ‘Women can’t speak’, look it up. You’re both going to hell.”

I tried to explain that the verse was taken out of context, but before I could get many words out he shouted that we had been fed a watered-down gospel, and it was a shame because now we were both going to hell because of it.

Dustin and I tried to speak of God’s love, but he would have none of it. He shouted Bible verses over us, and when he calmed down enough to let us speak, I asked him if people had ever come to know Jesus because of his shouting. He said they had. I asked how many.

“I don’t know, it’s not my job to know. My job is to preach the gospel.”

“But this isn’t the Gospel, the gospel is good news, you’re just telling everyone they’re going to hell-”

He cut us off again, “Because they are. What are you doing? You should be preaching the gospel instead of critiquing me. I’m the pastor, you shouldn’t question me. I’m going to heaven and you’re going to hell”

People around us were watching and a guy sitting on a bench clearly showed his incredulity at what the preacher was saying. We eventually left, seeing that he wouldn’t let us talk to his son and wouldn’t listen to us.

As we left, he told us to repent before we went to hell and another woman approached him, I think she was Christian as well, trying to speak truth to him. We discussed the scene with the guy on the bench named Shepherd, who was a Christian too. I didn’t want to stay too long though because the “preacher’s” words were heavy and I wanted to escape their weight.

The whole night after that I struggled with lies that I was a fake, unworthy of love, and shameful. Dustin kept speaking truth to me, but doubts of who I was a Christian woman seemed to hang over me like a dark cloud.

That night, after Dustin and I had prayed, I still couldn’t get the condemnation out of my head. So I snuck my computer under the covers and began to journal to God about how I felt. Soon I was crying uncontrollably, the “preacher’s” words had brought up so many old wounds of me questioning my worth.

Lies that I had been told over the years washed over me: that I was unlovable, that I was lesser as a woman, that my body was shameful, and that I was at my core, evil.

I tried to muffle my cries, but eventually, Dustin woke up. In between sobs, I explained what was wrong, he cried with me and held me. He reminded who I was and that I was so very loved. Slowly, I let the truth of who I was and how loved I was wash over me, and the cries slowed.

But when I began to think about the “preacher’s” son, and all of those people on the street that thought God hated them, I started to cry all over again. My heart was breaking for all those who didn’t know that God IS love and that his love for them is all-consuming.

I began to imagine what God must feel in all of this, seeing his children that he loves so desperately living in pain and hurting each other; thinking that at their core they are unlovable.

If you asked me what I thought the root of sin was in the world, that would be it: that people don’t understand how incredibly loved they are by God. It’s because of this lack of love that leads to all sorts of terrible behaviors that wound both ourselves and those around us.

And that’s why I had to speak the truth: God loves us. Anyone who tells you different is lying or doesn’t know who God is.

And it’s this truth that has led me to speak up this past year for who I believe God is and what I believe he wants, and as I’ve spoken up, I’ve never been so attacked, so demeaned, or belittled.

I’ve cried more about what strangers have said about me these last couple of months than I ever have in my whole life. I’ve chosen to allow myself to feel the pain because if I don’t, I will become hard and bitter just like them.

I’ve also come to a point in my faith where I know I’m not to remain silent about the injustice I see, though speaking up will cost me a lot of pain.

You see, years ago, when I was completely unsure of my worth or if God even loved me, I sat in a silent chapel in Australia, asking God what he thought of me. I was desperate for him to tell me who I was to him, because I had heard so many lies by that point. And in the silence, I heard him speak, “Light, Meghan, you are my light. That is who I’ve made you to be, and it’s who you are, even when you don’t see it in yourself.”

 

And with that I wept, it was the first time I was absolutely sure that God loved me and that he saw me as “light” at the core of who I was. I held the name close to my heart, I even got it tattooed on my wrist.

At the time, me being “light” answered my deepest core questions of my worth and my ability to be loved.

As I’ve matured, I’ve learned that being a “light” is so, so much more than realizing my own worth, it’s about seeing and revealing that worth in every other person.

There are two huge people groups who continually suffer from an attack on their worth: women and people of color. And I know this is precisely where I will lose some of you, as it is when I speak up for them that I generally get attacked.

Maybe it’s because they haven’t seen or experienced sexism or racism themselves that they get offended when people talk about their own experience with it. Maybe it’s because when people speak about it injustice they’ve been discredited by certain media outlets, and it’s easier and more comfortable to believe that sexism and racism don’t exist because if they do, then we’re obligated to do something about it. Honestly, I don’t know why people don’t want to believe that injustice exists, but I would encourage you to examine those feelings if you are feeling them right now.

And I get it, I do. I went to an evangelical church growing up and was taught that women should cover up and remain silent. I was taught that those in poverty are lazy. I was taught that what causes the most harm in the world is absent fathers, as if men, not God, were the solution to the world’s ills. And I tried to believe it, truly I did. If you talked to me in high school I would likely have repeated all of these views to you, but then God took me on a journey and everything changed.

When I traveled the world for several years doing missions work, it was immediately obvious to me that women are the most abused and oppressed people group. Period. In nearly every country I traveled to, they were contending to prove that they were more than property. The women I met were raped, abused, treated as property, bought and sold, mutilated, oppressed, belittled, and sexualized. These issues befell women across the globe and after being taught my own worth, I couldn’t help but see it in them. It led me to be an advocate for them and to start this blog.

When I moved to the South from one of the whitest counties in Colorado, my eyes were opened up to a whole new world of racism I had never seen before. Blacks and whites lived in different parts of town, ate in different restaurants, and generally shopped at different stores. Confederate flags and monuments abounded in rural areas, along with racial slurs. I started listening to experiences of my black friends and was sickened by the things I heard. Again, knowing my own worth allowed me to see theirs so I started speaking up on behalf of them as well.

And with speaking up, I learned, comes calling out. It means shining a light on our leaders and their decisions that allow sexism and racism to flourish. Light, by its nature, inherently reveals the dirt and grime that lingers in the shadows. It’s only when light is shined upon it, that we can clean it up.

This part of being a light isn’t fun. I don’t take pleasure in revealing the darkness of our systems and values because it exposes me as well. It reveals the areas in which I fall short and fail at times, and also angers those whose systems and values I expose.

Please hear me, I do not think I am God. I know that I am not, but when I speak up it’s because I believe God wants me to. It’s me trying to live out Isaiah 58:

““Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

That, my friends, is what it means to be light and it’s what I’m trying to do. As I speak, I try to remember all those who need me to speak up, all of those who have come forward and said “it’s because of people like you, I haven’t given up on God,” and not focus on all the critics that come my way.

I remember the giants that have come before me, like Maggie Kuhn, who by the way was the person who said “speak the truth, even if your voice shakes,” though she said it like this:

“Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind–even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants.” –Maggie Kuhn