Slowly I surfaced to consciousness. Where was I? Lying in a strange room, hurting and struggling for breath. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I lifted my right arm from the blanket and moved it around. Soon I felt the warmth of a stranger’s hand. “You’re okay, Mr. Wilson. The surgery went great. Your wife is anxious to see you.”
Thirty minutes later they rolled me back to my room. My wife, Susan, was there waiting. “Was there any nerve damage?” I whispered. “What did the doctor say? Will my voice return?”
The doctor didn’t know, she said. He’d know more tomorrow.
Tomorrow came, and the first doctor I saw was the anesthesiologist. She asked how I was doing. “I can’t talk,” I said in a raspy whisper.
“Do you mean it hurts to talk?”
“No,” I croaked. “I can’t talk.”
She looked shocked and began to fumble with her chart, murmuring something about it maybe being temporary. Then she left the room without saying goodbye.
She knows something, I thought. What happened in that operating room?
When the surgeon appeared that evening, I found out what happened. “Hi, doctor,” I whispered. He looked disappointed, but he sat on the bed and drew a diagram of what they had discovered during the surgery. A normal nerve to the vocal cord, he told us, is white and runs along the back of the thyroid gland. Mine was yellow and seemed to run through the middle. He tapped it to see if it was fatty tissue, but it would not break away. The assistant surgeon assured the doctor it was not the nerve and advised he cut it.
He asked for the instruments and got ready to sever the tissue—when something stopped him. He put the tools away, but the damage had been done. The tapping, he said, had frozen the nerve. “The function may return—or it may not,” he concluded.
“But I’m a preacher,” I said. “What do I do without a voice?”
A lump—and a test
This is how it started.
The week before, while working at the computer, I had sensed an unusual tightness in my neck. I went into the office bathroom and looked in the mirror, and there it was, just above my collar bone—a lump.
I immediately thought of John Black, a parishioner years ago. I could hear his raspy voice in my mind. Did I have cancer of the larynx like John? Would I lose my voice too? In those ten seconds, I discovered a lump, diagnosed my illness, resigned from my job, and visualized my funeral.
Two days later, I visited my doctor. He reassured me I did not have cancer of the larynx. If it was cancer at all, it was in my thyroid. “If you have to have a cancer, that’s the kind to have,” he said. “It’s the most curable.”
He sent me to a hospital for an ultrasound. The procedure was quick and painless, so I went back to the office for a few minutes. It was Friday and I wanted to make sure everything was ready for Sunday morning. I opened my Bible and reviewed Sunday’s sermon.
I had titled the message “When God Intervenes to Stop Us.” In the sermon I looked at the story of God stopping King David from building the temple. The message: Sometimes God stops us from doing something we want to do so that we’ll do something he wants us to do. The sermon ended with a question for the congregation: “Do you want to know God’s will, or do you want to do God’s will?”
I placed my notes in my Bible and went home, unaware that soon I would be required not just to preach the message, but to live it.
Theology, meet reality
Now I lay nearly mute in a hospital bed, managing to whisper to the surgeon, “Will my voice come back?” He looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe … “
Suddenly my theology and this reality met face-to-face—and my theology blinked. Would I ever preach again? How would I earn a living? What about my family?
That night, back home, I lay in bed praying. “God, I’m over here. Why are you doing this to me? Why don’t you heal me?”
The words from my last sermon came to mind. I felt God asking, “Jim, do you want to know my will or do you want to do my will?”
“God, I’m willing to do your will, but please, let my voice return. That will really glorify you if you give me back my voice. You could do it during … “
In the middle of the sentence, I stopped short. What if God does not heal me?
Yes, I knew God wanted faithfulness from me, no matter what—but was I really up to it? What if he really did take away my voice? What then?
Flickering faith
It wasn’t too hard at first. I had been told that normal function could return within two months. My church was willing to wait, and so was I.
In the beginning, people’s prayers touched me. One evening, a six-year-old girl prayed, “Jesus, please give Preacher back his voice so we can listen to him preach again.” I lost it—tears trickled down my cheeks. I knew that God would answer the prayers of this little angel.
I learned that the church really can be the scriptural bride of Christ.
But as the end of the two-month period neared, I began to resent the prayers as constant reminders that God wasn’t doing anything to help me. I even chided our ministry staff for spending so much time praying for me.
During that time we dropped the kids off at Grandma’s and went to a church conference. I thought it would help if I could hide in a corner and escape my problems. No such luck. The conference leader was one of those sit-in-a-circle-and-share types. He broke us into small groups to talk about our churches.
Or whisper, in my case. Afterward the guy next to me asked what was wrong with my voice. He seemed caring and sincere, so I told him.
The speaker began to call the groups back to attention. My new friend turned into my worst enemy when he interrupted the speaker to tell him about my situation and asked him to lead in prayer for me. I didn’t want their sympathy or their prayers; I just wanted them to leave me alone. I left the conference and didn’t go back.
My wife and my mother were my greatest encouragers. I worried about paying the bills, the welfare of the church, and my future in general. Susan’s faith never flickered, but I didn’t make it easy for her. “Stop yelling at me,” she’d say. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“I’m not yelling. I can’t even talk.”
“Yeah, but I can see it in your eyes.”
My mother was confident God would heal me. “He wouldn’t call you to preach without supplying you a voice,” she said.
“Sure, Mom,” I retorted. “Just like he healed Lori.” Lori—my little sister who had died less than a month before from lupus. How could I say such a thing to my mother?
“God, put your words in my mouth”
At church, attendance began to drop, people stopped joining, and we fell below the budget. One family accused me of being “unspiritual” and told me they were leaving the church. Another family was upset because I didn’t plan morning devotions at a church retreat. It got to the point where I did not know whether I could keep my pulpit.
I was haunted by memories of my previous pastorate, where, despite solid growth, a group conspired to force my exit. How, then, could this church keep me on? Outwardly the church supported me, but I feared underground rumblings that would erupt when I was most vulnerable.
I continually prayed for my voice to return, claiming Jeremiah 1:9 for my healing: “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth.’ “
God did not put his words in my mouth. I sat in silence and watched others preach in my pulpit for three months. Though I was grateful for their willingness to fill the pulpit, secretly I resented their booming voices and became inwardly critical of their sermon content and delivery. Their presence in my pulpit was a constant reminder to me that I was no longer a preacher.
But if I wasn’t a preacher, who was I?
Preaching through pain
The doctors tried again. I underwent a second operation to move the paralyzed vocal cord over so it could touch the healthy one and produce sound. This surgery allowed me to speak slightly above a breathy whisper. It was an improvement, but we were hoping for so much more.
I returned to the pulpit. Preaching hurt physically, but worse than the physical pain, it was emotionally devastating. For the first time in my ministry, I saw people’s eyes glaze over while I preached. I was forced to speak in a choppy, weak monotone, taking a breath every seven seconds. (The average person can speak for 21 seconds without taking a breath.)
Because of my limitations, I cut the length of my sermons in half. Our minister of music became an active participant. She read the Scripture and occasionally sang a song in the middle of the sermon. Her participation gave some variety to the presentation and allowed me brief moments to rest my aching voice.
Church attendance rose slightly. These changes bought me some time, but I knew my voice had to improve—the day would come when the people would run out of patience.
Three months after that second operation, the doctor examined me. He recommended further surgery, this time from the Nashville specialist who had taught him the procedure. The last thing I wanted was another operation, but I was ready if I could get my voice back.
Taking my own medicine
The third operation worked. Today I have a near-normal voice and can preach without help.
And, after two unsuccessful surgeries, I realized why we call doctors “practicing physicians.” They are not perfect; they are still practicing. Me? I’m still a “practicing preacher,” not perfect, still learning as I go. My sermons apply to me as much as they apply to anyone in the congregation.
During this year, I struggled through some of the darkest moments of my life. I’m ashamed of some of my actions and attitudes. How could I tell people not to pray for me? Why couldn’t I trust my church? I learned that the church really can be the scriptural bride of Christ, instead of a sadistic shrew.
I’m not proud that I asked God: “Why are you doing this to me?” Yet I know the question is a statement of faith. It presupposes that God exists, and that he loves me and is in control of my destiny.
Things are different now. I listen more and talk less. Shortly after my recovery, I began to get phone calls from some of the quiet people in the church. “Pastor, after all you’ve been through, I know you will understand my problem. Can we get together this week?”
I realize, too, that God’s love for me is not dependent on what I do for him. And every Sunday morning before I preach, I step into the prayer room for a moment:
“Dear Lord, thank you for giving my voice back to me. Please use it for your glory. Today, I need a strong voice so I can preach, but more than that, I need a strong faith so I can practice what I am about to preach.”
James Wilson is pastor of First Baptist Church Alameda in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
