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Words are powerful. Many people, if they take time, can think of wise words from a teacher, parent, or friend that made a great impact on their life. Many people can spotlight an encouraging word that lifted them at a very low time. Many people can also remember some searing sentence, the memory of which brings blushing shame even today, years later.

My mother was a great knitter. She never went to meetings without her ball of yarn and a sweater-in-progress. At home she was forever holding up sections of a new work against my arms or chest or back, to see whether they would fit. Unfortunately, not all of her sweaters were triumphs. Often the size or shape or color was decidedly odd.

I do remember one outstanding creation, however. When I was in the seventh grade, she gave me for Christmas a bright red, cable-knit sweater, very distinctive and attractive. I proudly wore it to school, where a boy noticed it and looked it over critically.

"It looks like a girl's sweater," he said.

I never wore the sweater out of the house again.

Our words matter. The Book of Genesis portrays God creating the world by speaking. In a related way, we create the world we live in through our words. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we pay attention to our words—both those we intend and those that slip out when we are not paying attention. And we also need to be conscious of how we deliver the words we use. No matter how encouraging the actual words are, they will lose their positive values if accompanied by an uninterested voice or lack of eye contact. The way we talk to each other can build a world full of love and security, or a world of bitterness and anxiety.

Take a married couple. The man does not talk. To compensate, his wife talks too much. In particular, she shoots off her mouth about his mother. If you pressed him, he would admit that his mother is far from perfect. But he simply does not want to hear it all the time, especially from his wife. To him, the running down of his mother is like a dripping faucet. It is not any particular drip that kills him; it's the wearing effect of the whole thing.

She, on the other hand, is worn down by his silence. She wants to hear that her husband loves her and likes the way she looks. He does compliment her cooking, but that does not help. She knows she is a good cook. Her attractiveness is what she needs affirmed.

Her husband is not a sentimental person, and she knew that when she married him. She did not know how wearisome it would be. She is tired of taking the initiative. She wants him to bring a little romance to the marriage. For a long time she tried to wheedle it out of him, but she has given that up. He just won't listen to her needs, she says.

Can anyone help these two? A moralistic approach will not work; they both can give you nine yards of reasons why they are justified in their behavior. You could take a more psychological approach, trying to delve into their pasts. But there is no certainty you will ever get to the basis of why they behave as they do, or that they would be able to change their behavior if you did.

Without taking anything away from a moral approach or a psychological approach, I would suggest another way. It would help a great deal, I believe, if both would learn how to talk. The woman needs to learn to limit her critiques of her mother-in-law. The man needs to learn some ways to say, "I love you," so his wife can hear it. Both of them need to learn new ways of bringing up sore subjects without starting fights that make everything worse. If they learned such skills, it might not put an end to all their troubles, but it would be a huge and helpful start. It would stop the bleeding and begin to let their love flow through.

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October 2 1995, Vol. 39, No. 11