Power to build up or tear down
"Hi, beautiful!" my new husband, Jerry, called from the back bedroom where he was making pottery. I'd just come home from my university classes.
"Hi," I mumbled, heading into the kitchen of our bungalow to cook dinner. My straight hair was pulled into a ponytail, and I wore my usual outfit of cut-off army fatigues and threadbare plaid shirt. Because my father had sexually abused me when I was young, I'd always felt ugly and dirty and tended to dress the part. But since Jerry and I had married a few months before, he routinely called me beautiful.
No other man has ever called me beautiful, I thought, grabbing a handful of spaghetti. Although I'd heard Jerry say those words before, for some reason, that day it felt as if God himself wrapped his arms around me, and my feeling of ugliness began to melt away.
As a psychotherapist, I've seen many people healed by the power of words. Sometimes those words are understanding; sometimes warm; sometimes forgiving (or seeking forgiveness); sometimes encouraging. Through our words, we can be the incarnation of Jesus to each other, just as Jerry was, and still is, to me. He saw God's beauty in me and spoke the healing words I needed to hear, setting me on a path to recovery and wholeness.Karen Rabbitt in Marriage Partnership, April 2007
Read the rest of the article "Sticks and Stones..."
What Karen has to say in her article is common sense, something learned and re-learned, and easy to take for granted as a marriage unfolds.
I offer her article as a reminder. Remember the power of your words to hurt and harm or to help and heal. Simple expressions "Hi, beautiful" can be more powerful than we know.
Don't let the simple (and powerful) become routine (and empty). Be vigilant with your words and expressions. From time to time check them out and reinvest them with the positive energy you intended from the beginning (when you were newlyweds, for example).
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