Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Proverbs 16:24
When people think of me, they probably think: Energetic, funny, happy, sassy…
Sweet doesn’t come to mind, I bet. And it’s true. I’m not sweet.
My older sister? Definitely sweet. One time when I was a little girl my dad said something that I won’t repeat because it would completely embarrass her, but what I gathered from it was that she’s extremely sweet, and I’m not. (Now, to defend my dad, I bet he wasn’t trying to tell me that I wasn’t sweet. He was just making a very weird statement about how sweet my sister is, and I knew the same didn’t apply to me…)
Anyway… something that I struggled with, especially in my teenage years, were my words. They weren’t like honey. My dad, after getting frustrated with me after the latest round of yelling, typed up a proverb from the Bible and put it up on the fridge so I would see it when I came down from my bedroom: A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Proverbs 15:1.
It wasn’t appreciated. (And I never seemed to fight with my mom… Hmmm…)
My mom said the reason why my dad and I fought a lot was that I was a lot like him. Now that I have kids, I see that even more. And you know who’s just like me? My oldest son. Arg!!! Sorry, kid.
I’m trying to combat this in a constructive way, and encourage self-control in BOTH of us. I know that I’m not perfect, and I think that if our kids see that we are humble enough to let God work in our hearts even though we are grown-ups, it will go a long way in their lives long-term. We need to have God work in our hearts our entire lives.
I got this from Pinterest, of course…
The idea is to encourage “soft words”. I tweaked it a little bit for what I think would work best for our hearts. (Thanks, Son #2, for helping me make the pom pons!)
The Plan: When we want to use a harsh word or a harsh tone, but use self-control and STOP, we will put a pom pon in the mason jar. When a harsh word/tone is used, out it comes.
Hopefully it will help us to love each other better.