You never know when you will have an opportunity to learn a life lesson. It can happen anywhere, anytime. I recently heard a story about the tongue and how powerful it can be. It was told by a guy that sat at a basketball game one night. He was sitting with some people he knew. The gym was packed. There were also people all around him that he didn’t know. As he sat there for a little while, he couldn’t help but hear the people above him. He had no idea who they were. They were talking negatively about everything that there was, except their own kids of course. He listened to them talk about their team’s coach, the other team’s coach, their team’s players, the other team’s players. He heard them talk about all kinds of subjects during this game. The one thing that he noticed was that nothing they said, literally the entire time he sat there, was positive. Everything they said was negative about someone or something. They complained about things. They made fun of and criticized people. This went on for quite some time. He thought several times about saying something to them, but didn’t think that would probably end too well. Just down the row from him sat a lady by herself. He thought to himself she had to be hearing everything that he was hearing. He looked over casually at her one time and noticed that she was crying. His curiosity was getting to him. He wanted to ask her what was wrong. He didn’t have a clue. He wanted to ask her if there was anything he could do to help. It was just unusual to see someone sitting at a ballgame crying. Then he noticed the lady turned around to the people behind him. Without raising her voice or saying anything in a demeaning manner she told them, “I have sat here and listened to you criticize or make fun of pretty much everyone in this gym. But the last person you made fun of was my son. I would really appreciate it if you would keep your comments about other people, including my son to yourself. If you want to think negatively of people and have that conversation, please do it when you aren’t around other people. I know you don’t know me, or my son, but he is doing the best he can and doesn’t deserve to be made fun of by some complete strangers, or anyone for that matter. Thank You!” He wanted to stand up and clap and cheer for her, but he thought that might kill the mood that she had just established. He wasn’t sure how the people behind him would take this. But, to his surprise one of the gentlemen behind him said, “Mam, I am so sorry. We had no idea that was your child and we are so sorry for saying anything negative about him.” As I heard this story, I had a lot more respect for those people after hearing how they responded. I also had a lot of respect for that mom that stood up for her child. Perhaps the biggest reason why I respected that mom so much is the way she went about it. She could have turned around and let it eat on those people. But she chose to get her point across in a very mature, effective way. Maybe she helped some other people realize the impact their words were having on other people. I don’t even know if this story is true, but it illustrates very effectively how powerful the tongue can be.
This is a topic that is hard for me. I have a lot of things I struggle with. I have a lot of personal flaws. But the tongue might be the hardest for me to control. I’m not sure why, but I have always wanted to have the last word in an argument. I always wanted to be right. But as I have gotten older, I have tried to be more careful with what I say about others and how I say things. But that doesn’t mean that I have mastered it yet. I have talked about before how I have prayed for patience, and controlling the tongue is one thing that goes along with that. I struggle with this and I work hard to try and get better at it. But just like many other things, I catch myself sometimes not being very good at it.
My wife are I don’t argue very often, but when we do I like to get the last word in. I don’t know why, maybe because I am always right (just ask her). She might not agree with that. This might in fact spark another debate between us. The problem is sometimes we are so much alike that it takes awhile to end one of these arguments because we both like to have the last word. We are both pretty good at sarcasm. We both are too competitive to just give in. We don’t like the other one to feel like they got the best of the other one. So we just keep on with those little sarcastic jabs. Then that turns into frustration for one while the other walks away feeling like they just conquered the world.
So today after church, knowing I was going to write on this today, I had an opportunity to put this into practice and see what the end result was. She told me that we needed to go by the grocery store to get some things so she could make something for our church Christmas party. So when I hear grocery store I think United or Homeland. To me that is a grocery store. It is also so much easier and quicker than Walmart. But she says she needs to go to Walmart. There are times when I would rather have teeth pulled than go to Walmart. It just takes forever and is so frustrating. Men will understand this part. Sometimes you go in the store with your wife. But, sometimes she says that it won’t take long because she just has to have a few things, so you drop her off at the front and go park. You park thinking that she was serious about just needing a few things. You watch that clock as the minutes tick by. Ten minutes go by and that could be due to long lines. Twenty minutes go by and that could be that she is talking to someone. Thirty minutes go by and it could be a combination of several things. Past that it is unexplainable. I sometimes envision her standing in an isle just waisting time to frustrate me. I imagine her just standing there on Facebook or texting someone with a big smile on her face knowing that I am getting a little perturbed. Now there are times in the past when I would send little jab text of sarcasm thinking that was going speed her up. I would ask her if she got lost in there or I would tell her the fresh food was going to spoil before she got back to the car. I’m not sure why I thought this would end well or speed her up. But repeatedly I did. So then would come the time when she arrived back in the car. It wasn’t enough that I sent those text, but I would just have to get another little jab in there about finding everything alright or needing to fill up with gas now because it took so long. This would no doubt end with a sarcasm filled spat. These sarcasm filled spats are what caused my sister-in-law, and probably others, to question whether we should get married. But here we are, still surviving one Walmart trip at a time. Then today I tested a new method.
Today I sat in the car for 30 minutes or so outside Walmart, all for just a few items. I had things to do this afternoon. But I didn’t send her a text. I waited PATIENTLY. When she came out I went and picked her up. I didn’t say a word about the amount of time she was in there. I had so many good one liners to throw out there, but I didn’t. I refrained. I held back my sarcasm. To my amazement there was no arguing. There was no sarcastic aura about the car that caused frustration or dissension between us. In fact we had a great conversation on the way home. It was productive. I guess maybe it is better to just remain silent and not be negative about some things. A little piece of me felt defeated because I still wanted her to know that I felt it could have been done quicker. But I still remained silent.
As I said earlier, I am as a bad as anyone about talking about others sometimes. Sometimes we think of controlling the tongue as not cussing. It is so much more than that. It is about not gossiping or saying rude or negative things about others. It is about not having a negative impact on other people by the words we use. They don’t have to be about that person to have a negative impact on them. If our words cause them to have negative thoughts about someone or something then we haven’t used our words wisely. The saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is not really true. We have all been hurt by someone’s words at some point. We have also all hurt someone else by our words at some point. James 3:6 says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” James compares the damage a tongue can do to a fire that can spread quickly. The tongue can do severe damage. Once things are said they can’t be erased. Satan uses our tongue to destroy a lot of relationships and cause a lot of problems. Sometimes we think that even if we say some hurtful things that we can apologize later and everything be ok. While we most certainly can and should apologize to those we hurt, we also can’t take the scars away that those words caused. Proverbs 13:3 says, “He who guards his lips guards his life. But he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.” The things these verses warn against are so difficult to do. So many times we say things without thinking. We don’t intend for anything negative to happen when we say things sometimes. Those people in the first story of this post didn’t mean to hurt that lady’s feelings. They weren’t purposely thinking about talking bad about that lady’s child. But they spoke without thinking about the ramifications of their words.
Then there are other times when we know what the result of our words are going to be. I know every time that when I say something about sitting in the Walmart parking lot my wife is not going to respond with, “You know what, you are right honey. I took took too long and next time I will do much better.” If she came back with that I wouldn’t even have a response. I might have a false sense of victory thinking that I had won the battle and made her realize she took to long. But I know that’s not going to happen. I know that she is going to feel attacked and come back with a response and we will go back and forth. So what I learned today was that if I can’t say anything positive, just don’t say anything. It just makes the rest of the day go better.
My challenge to everyone this week is to be very aware of the words we use. Be aware of those around us and what our words are doing to them. Think before we speak. Ask ourselves if what we are about to say is going to have a negative or positive impact on others. Ask ourselves if what we are about to say is gossip, truth, or even necessary to say. I know I have a lot of work to do on this. Not only in my conversations with my wife and kids, but also with everyone else I am around on a daily basis. It is so easy to talk about others or say things that we aren’t sure are even true just because that’s what we heard. What if we all thought before we spoke. What if we focused on being positive with our words. How much better would our lives be? How much more positive would our outlook be because of getting rid of so much negativity? Negativity is everywhere. It is in the way we talk. It is all over social media. It is all over television. Nothing can change if we don’t start with a change in ourselves. Sometimes we don’t realize how much negativity we are around or cause ourselves until we take a deep, purposeful look at it. Let’s focus this week on only positive words and see how that changes us and the others around us!!!