How our words can kill or heal

He stood there in the grocery aisle, husband and food cart driver, staring into space. I noticed him partly because of the precariously-balanced load he was pushing, but mostly because of his empty expression. The empathy in my heart registered numbness.

I picked up a pound of my favorite coffee and noticed the aisle was getting a little crowded. That’s about when I noticed his wife, but within seconds everyone in the aisle noticed her. She began scolding him in a harsh-toned Spanglish, and by her hand gestures and the few words I understood she was saying something to the effect of, “I told you not to bring the cart down this aisle! Why didn’t you stay out in the main aisle like I told you to? You are so stupid!”

He never raised his head, just pushed the cart slowly out into the main aisle. She never stopped berating him, and as soon as they were out of the way of other shoppers, she lit into him full-force. I loosely gathered that she was bringing up all manner of other issues and mixing them in with his cart faux pas.

What struck me was how he never even looked up. Never said a word. Never even really acknowledged her shrieking, her contorted expression, her biting words. The rest of us noticed, and as another shopper walked past me down the aisle we exchanged a quick “Yikes!” expression before she hurried away.

What makes a woman treat her husband this way? What brokenness lives in her heart that she must attack and beat down and destroy another human heart—specifically one joined to hers (presumably) in holy matrimony?

I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of loss, of regret, of sadness at what their life together must be like. I hadn’t moved very far from that spot when my sweet Steve came around the corner and found me near tears. Swallowing past the lump in my throat I briefly explained what I’d witnessed in hushed tones lest she still be within earshot. He put his arm around me and we moved on in search of Cheerios.

I haven’t been able to shake that feeling of loss, and it has left me with a burning question in my spirit.

What if we could all feel what another is feeling when receiving our words?

What if picturing the likely response made our words breathe healing and repair and hope instead of inflicting pain and reducing others to a puddle of shame and defeat?

What if we just took a moment to think before we speak—or write?

Have you ever treated anyone the way that wife treated her husband? Maybe your own husband, or your child, or a friend, or a neighbor? Maybe it was a store clerk or your dry cleaner or a parent.

Might you join me, dear friend, in resolving to think before we speak, to love and speak life with our words?

 

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A Write Where It Hurts column post

When you love everyone but yourself

I heard the ugliness leap out of my own mouth, pulled up just shy of the stove and listened to the words echoing back at me, reverberating off the Tuscan-painted tiles on the backsplash. “Lisa, you are so stupid!”

I didn’t even flinch. I wasn’t surprised by it, partly because I’ve heard it my whole life (mostly in my own voice) and partly because I’ve accepted it as truth.

It was nothing heinous I had done. It usually isn’t. It’s things like today when I had to remake the grilled cheese sandwich three times because I kept getting distracted and burning one side. Who does that—three times in one lunch? Apparently I do, and my auto-responder is primed to give me heck for it.

As I stood there today buttering yet another slice of potato bread, I found myself wondering why I talk to myself the way I do. It occurred to me that I’m not really consciously hating on myself—the wide-eyed woman I see when I look into the mirror—but rather that I am habitually spewing negative self-talk that I’ve simply gotten used to uttering. I don’t even know it’s coming out until I hear it.

I don’t know about you, but that is a feature of auto-pilot I don’t much like.

I got to thinking after a little introspection that I don’t genuinely dislike me—certainly not enough to purposely want to shoot such hate-filled bullets at myself. But I’ve discovered there’s an all but invisible bull’s-eye I painted on my forehead somewhere along the line in my childhood, and out of mere habit I keep catching myself firing off without even a ready-aim.

I wouldn’t dream of speaking to anyone else like that, so why is it so easy to turn it inward?

I’ve wondered most of my life at the fact that I rarely take anyone else to task for a mistake or misstep, yet there seems to be a fair number of people ready to jump on me for mine. Maybe my self-inflicted attacks are just my way of saving them the trouble. I’ve never considered that until this moment. When did I sign up to be a member of my own self-aimed brute squad?

And now I’m wondering, if I don’t stop bullying me, how will anyone else be deterred? If the woman in the mirror can’t count on me to stand up for her, what hope is there that anyone else will value who I am and what I have to offer the world?

And now I ask you, sweet friend—as you face the mirror, stone in hand, ready to throw—to join me in letting the Prince of Peace steady our hands and trace our real worth into the sand.

Because while sand and sandwiches matter, the Artist who painted beauty and value and abundance into the backsplash of our lives loves us so much more.

 

 

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