A mouth to speak kind words March 16, 2009

I have been thinking about words today.  I know that sounds a little strange. But I do love words. One of my collegues here at CP (his name rhymes with rug…) manages to occasionally slip a word into an email of which I have NO idea what it means. It drives me crazy because I thought I was pretty word savvy before I started working here. But I seriously have learned 4 new words. Words I never even knew existed.  My favourite one is effulgent.  It is actually what I want to be.  My new goal (I’m not telling you what it means, you have to look it up yourself)

There is so much power in the spoken word. A few weeks ago at our midweek program, we did an exercise at one of our stations that involved the children each getting a piece of paper with their name on it. Other children then had to write kind words about them on their papers. It was very interesting for me to observe that the younger group just LOVED this activity. It was so cute. I heard things like, “You are SO pretty, You are great at drawing, You have lovely sparkly teeth, I think you are the nicest girl I know, You have the best red hair!”. My heart was warmed as I heard these young ones speaking words of life into each other, and the ones receiving the praise would beam – it’s NICE to hear things that are positive about yourself! It feels good!

Then we switched groups. It was like night and day. My older class sat there very ackwardly. They did not know what to do. It was a struggle to participate and they needed TONS of encouragement on how to encourage. It was a little painful for me to see that it was hard for them to speak kindly to one another. It took effort. There was more pressure. It did not come as easy.

I wondered why that was. I wondered what changed in those couple years of age difference.  I wondered to myself why is it harder to speak words of life as we get older. Maybe our life experiences catch up to us. We are more aware of rejection, we’ve been hurt, we don’t know how people will react. Sometimes we hear so many words that are negative that we struggle when we have to be positive. I think that in the word around us, more often we hear words spoken that hurt rather than heal.

When my son was little, we would pray a special prayer each day before I’d bring him to school. I’d pray that God would give him ears to listen, eyes to see how to be a good friend, and a mouth to speak kind words. I wanted him to be aware that people around him needed encouragement and that he could do that – he could listen, he could be good to others and he could also SPEAK with kindness.  Now that he is older, I still pray that with him and his sister. I want my children to be speakers of life,  in a world where often they unfortunately hear things that I can’t always control.  That is my prayer too for our CP Kidz. They can learn to be speakers of life. I know many of them already are.  Why can’t our children show the love of Jesus through the way they speak to others – they can!  I love Proverbs 16:24. It says, “Pleasant words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” I love to think that word can bring healing. It’s like a sweet medicine, a balm. Repairing and mending.

As I continue my quest for words, I pray that God will allow me to use each day the words I do know to speak his love to others.

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