From My Heart Out of Ann's Lips, Spoken Softly yet Moving Me to Make the Commitment
“When you talk, do not say harmful things, but say what people need—words that will help others become stronger.“ Ephesians 4:29 (NCV)
I had looked around the table and into their eyes. Into them. I had held them in my one hand, them pinked and swaddled, and I had made them strong with the milk letting down and the love, and I had witnessed the stretching of the spine, the first tottering steps and I had squealed wonder and I had offered the hand. Mamas make strong.
When we had finished the Bible reading, we reach for hands to pray, I feel little fingers again and couldn’t I do this again?
Just for today:
Couldn’t all the words out of my mouth only be the strengthening words? Words that nourish their bones and muscle their hearts.
What if I tried to change nothing in children but I focused on only this: Only speak words that make souls stronger.
Like oxygen, couldn’t just speaking strengthening-words change the whole of the atmosphere
We breathe grace. This oxygen changes everything.
The tongue is the tail of the heart. And a lashing tongue is the symptom of an anger riddled heart. It’s always the heart that whips the tongue hard and breaks the backs weak.
And I thought then that I was finally getting it: If Grace always pulses the heart, and love’s the blood coursing tender through veins, the tail of the heart, that tongue, it caresses and it strokes and it revives the soul until small ones stand up David-tall before Goliaths.
That is the heart-made gift I could give my family this year. To only speak Words that make them stronger.
That under the tree I could give them the gift of words that make them tall and strong... trees of their own with roots deep down into the grace and love and heart of Christ.
Words. Could there be a greater gift to give in honor of the Word made flesh?"
I find my heart aching as I think about all those moments I have spoken to my babies (those souls who are a part of me, breathing their first breath from my womb, seeing God's design as I relate it to them) with harsh words, needless words, exasperated and tired tones that leave my mouth sometimes before I even realize it.
My heart longs to relate to them more how much I love them, to build them stronger as Ann wrote about above. To build them up tall and strong before God and the world, that they might contribute to God's army.
How do I do this while instructing, correcting, implementing discipline and teaching them the straight? Can those two things go together? Jesus perfected the breathing of love and building tall along with teaching, instructing and showing the way. To be like Jesus....Oh to be like Jesus. Help me Jesus to be more like you, to speak words that build my children, express love and joy to them, that tell them how blessed I am to have them.
I reiterate this word from Ann: "How can a mother be frustrated her child is not as she longs him to be, when she herself is not as she longs to be?"
Then I ponder the question that nags me, "Do I try to change them? I had not considered it in that way because I know I love them so deeply it hurts. I believe I love them for exactly who I God made them to be. But, in my meditation of Ann's words I consider I may have mixed in the pot with teaching, instructing, disciplining and showing the straight and expecting who they are to change.
As I strive to draw out of them the raw and put into them good, from Him who shed His blood for them, I must find a way to speak words that build and grow making babies string. And I must allow Jesus to do the same with me, draw out the raw and put in the good, the God made.
That I might Speak words, whether in teaching, instructing, disciplining, building up or drawing out, WORDS THAT MAKE SOULS STRONGER.
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