Words as Sweet as Honey

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.