Proverbs 15:4
Kind words heal and help; cutting words wound and maim.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
I am fifty-five years old, and I still remember how insulted I was by something my first grade teacher said to me in 1963. I shared a table with three to five other children, and the little boy sitting next to me threw up his morning milk one day… all over the table and the floor. Understandably, I scooted my chair to the side and moved away from this boy. I can still picture it all vividly. My teacher (whom I adored) came over and said, “Debra, if that is getting you goat, then MOVE!” I was crushed! It wasn’t as much what she said as her tone. It was as if I had done something wrong. She seemed to have no sympathy that I might be negatively impacted in any way by this event!
By the same token, I remember a totally different event on my first day of school. My mother says that I refused to let her to come with me. I can’t imagine that she allowed me to call the shots like that, but it was a different time… and the elementary school was practically in our back yard. And in my mother’s defense, she had a five-year-old and a two-year-old to tend to at home. So I walked to the school by myself. But when I got there, the signs that listed the class rosters were posted too high for me to read. I could not find my name. My friend Martha’s mother, Mrs. Duncan, offered to help me and said something like, “Oh, look! There it is! You and Martha are in the same class!”
I still love my first grade teacher – gone to heaven now. And I dearly love Mrs. Duncan, who has shown me innumerable kindnesses over a lifetime. But a comment I am sure my teacher considered quite innocent – and delivered out of frustration that I came to understand later as a teacher myself – cut me deeply at the time. And I never forgot it. I have to wonder what I have said to others over the years that has not been forgotten… what cutting, hurtful words I might have uttered - even flippantly, or without a second thought - that have resonated for years with someone else.
I cannot change the past… but I most certainly can be awake and alert moving forward. I can guard my heart and my tongue… and make sure that I do my very best not to utter words that are hurtful or offensive to someone else. God is more than willing and able to help me with this. He will help you, as well… if only you will call on Him to do so.
We never know what impact our words and actions have on another. I want mine to be as positive, healing and supportive as possible… and I am calling on God to help me ensure that this happens. What about you?
©2012 Debbie Robus
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