Bury the Castle
I watched an online sermon today by Preston Morrison about the power of our words. It hits home in several areas. The message is that our words can build up or tear down another person. They can heal or they can hurt. He talked about how, if we let God use our words to heal others, we will never regret it. I have thought about this all day. At one point, I told my daughter about it (obviously in kiddo language) and now she puts more thought into how she speaks to her little brother. The reference to how our words can bring about healing in another person really stuck with me and I started to think of the implications that would have if we actually took it to heart and engrained it into our everyday lives.
We sisters grew up with nine brothers, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a family as big as ours. In my opinion, we had amazing parents that loved us, raised us with standards and a moral compass, and taught us about God and how to have a relationship with Him. Now, what we each chose to do with all that invaluable training is a different story.
Today, in our adulthood, there are many riffs between the siblings. Words spoken to hurt and wounds that never healed. Callouses built up over the years from pain, distrust, abandon, betrayal. Excuses made on so many levels for this sibling or that sibling. And a few of us that don’t speak to a few of the others. It’s heartbreaking, really, when I stop and think about it. Our parents built a legacy, an army as my mom says, a castle of strength and stone. And we spend our time breaking it down and burying it. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.
But what it…. WHAT IF… we only spoke words to each other that built each other up? Could you imagine the implications of that?! The mental and emotional health that would abound amongst the twelve of us from a lifetime of hearing only healing words from each other. We would all be unbelievably successful in life… our relationships with our spouses and children, our careers, our hobbies, pretty much anything we did… All because we would have only heard encouragement from each other. We would have, quite literally, PUSHED EACH OTHER TO GREATNESS!
Instead, the deepest dig into one of our characters seems to get the biggest applause. Smirks at another’s failure because, “Well, maybe they should have listened to me!” Power struggles to know the most, be the most successful, and acquire the most money. Witty banter we all laugh at, but all know how much it wounds. Obviously… we have failed in all of our glorious dysfunction. To this day, I can repeat verbatim hurtful words spoken by my siblings that influenced my life. Moments in my childhood when another’s actions altered the core of who I was. It makes me think… what jabs have I put out there that stuck with my siblings? What did I do that impacted them negatively and gave them another hurt to carry? Jokingly or not, we are all leaving an imprint on each other. Possibly even more so now, as adults.
I don’t think that it is ever too late to start something good. I did it today, starting with my 7 year old daughter. Arguably the easiest place to start, but hey at least I started! This will take a lot of UN-training for me. I’m not usually a negative person, I think I try to find the good in situations that arise. But, put me with some of my siblings and MAN! I can get in on the poking and prodding, the gossiping, the dark hole of scrutinizing another… without even realizing it. So I have started watching what I say. Even changing how I think about people. It isn’t easy, its like you have a constant check-point in your brain, and its taking a lot of prayer. But I want to be a part of the healing God brings to other’s lives through words. Who’s with me?!
