Words We Want to Stick for Life
When I was a little girl in the 1950s and early 1960s, my family and I walked across the street each Sunday morning for Sunday School. After the devotional with the whole church in the auditorium, little girls with freshly-curled hair, frilly dresses over can-can slips, white anklets, and patent leather shoes and little boys with Brylcreemed hair, white shirts, bow ties, dress pants, and leather dress shoes scrambled off to Sunday School in the basement. We sat down noisily in little wooden chairs around little wooden tables where our teachers awaited us.
My mother, brother, and me in our Sunday clothes in 1959
We each licked a star to put on the attendance chart. We listened to the Bible story, used a brad to attach an object to our handwork for the day, and received our baseball-card-sized Bible story card to take home. We sang “Jesus Loves Me,” “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock.” As I mentioned yesterday, we also sang about having careful eyes, ears, hands, feet, and tongues and about our Father up above looking down on us.
In years past, it was a little unnerving sometimes to know that my Father up above was looking at me all the time. Now I am comforted to know that He is looking down in love. I certainly don’t want Him to take His eyes off me for a minute. That would be disaster!
We mothers need carefully to consider the last verse of that song. One of our mottos should be, “Be careful little mama what you say.” How can something as invisible as a word be so powerful—powerful for good and powerful for ill?
Some words should be avoided at all cost: words like lazy, sloppy, and stupid–words that would make it into a G-rated movie, but that can cause great harm in the heart of a child.
Our job every day is to teach lifelong lessons to our children. Sadly, lazy, sloppy, and stupid have a way of sticking for life, but what we want to stick for life are words like:
“I have loved you since before you were born.”
“Wow, you are so good at ______________.”
“Of all the blessings God has ever given to me, getting to be your mother is one of my favorites.”
Don’t you know it made Jesus feel wonderful when He came up out of the water after John baptized him in the Jordan River . . .
And behold, a voice out of the heavens said,
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Matthew 3:17