Delighting in My Voice

I am distracted by the utter cuteness that is someone's toddler, running around the coffee shop, saying hi because it's the only word she seems to know. She has no fear running up to me sharing her one word. It's her word. Her ability to connect with the big wide world around her. So she keeps using that one word, over and over again. Asking, inviting those around her to respond to her one word.

A whisper of a thought strikes me, do I see? Do I get it? This toddler isn't judging her word. She's revelling in it. Sharing it freely, not concerned about how others are going to perceive it. Not afraid that her one word isn't good enough. Those of us around her respond to her word with smiles, enjoying her exploration of her voice and her world.

Somewhere along the way I lost my delight in my words. I stopped approaching my world like a toddler. I learned to judge my words, to hesitate in approaching strangers, to stop exploring. I learned that my words weren't as good as someone else's words. I stopped delighting in words and my ability to communicate. I micro-focused on learning better words, on digging deep to find the perfect meaning. There's value in that. There is value in expanding vocabulary. But in learning that, in learning new words, I got caught up in the quest to refine my words, and stopped using them.

This year of become has been one heck of a journey. It's not over yet either. There's still another three months ahead of me. If they are anything like the last nine have been, I may not recognize myself by the end of it! A huge part of this year has been reclaiming my delight in my written words. Delighting in stringing thoughts into sentences, building paragraphs, taking a deep breath and pushing publish. It's not the only place that my words have been spilling out. by the end of this year, I'll have filled three journals.

I'm not yet like that little girl running around the coffee shop. I'm not ready to put me and my words out there everywhere I go. I am becoming though. I am learning to delight in my words, even though it feels self-indulgent. I'm finding myself as I put pen to paper. It's a beautiful thing.