While I'm Shutting Up...

"The tongue has the power of life and death..."
-Proverbs 18:21a

So I lost my voice and tonight is opening night for the musical I am in.  Which means that I have put myself on vocal rest the last couple of days and taken almost every suggestion given to me for getting my voice back in time.

By the by, it turns out that for every person you ask, there is a guaranteed voice cure.  So far I have:

-stopped talking
-tried to rest (yay, napping!)
-gargled with salt water
-eaten only warm or room temperature foods
-avoided dairy
-drunk warm water
-sucked continually on Vitamin C cough drops
-drunk Throat Coat tea mixed with a homemade ginger mixture
-drunk an "elixir" made by a fellow barista (one bag Zen tea, one bag Refresh tea, 2 honeys, 1/2 hot water, 1/2 steamed lemonade)
-drunk warm grapefruit juice
-taken a shot of whiskey and lemon juice

It's pretty weird to work at Starbucks and not be able to use your voice.  I am so grateful to my shift supervisors and fellow baristas for helping cover for me voice-wise the last couple of days.  

Vocal rest has gotten me thinking about words.  It's kind of like when you only have $10 and you go to the store: you are pretty picky about what you take to the register.  You sort through things you might possibly want, and eliminate items until you know what matters to you enough that you would sacrifice your money for it.

It's like that with vocal rest.  When you only have a limited amount of words, you become more intentional than usual about where you decide to spend your vocal chord energy.  (Okay, I guess if I was a purist, I would use no words, but I've found them necessary at times.  I have also gotten creative with hand gestures.)

Sometimes, honestly, I've liked the vocal rest, an excuse to stay in my train of thought.  And sometimes it's felt a bit lonely.

Also, this silence has taught me more about listening.  In order to decide where to spend my precious few words, I have to listen to what's going on around me and see where there is a need for words, and where it would be okay to save my voice.

A need for words.

Wow!  What a concept.  How often do I think about words this way?  When could silence be better than words?

Let's find out...