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.

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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.

Such training in talking you do not get at school. You get it—if you get it—at home. It is typically transmitted mother to daughter, father to son. Unfortunately, a lot of people miss out. Such training takes time, and it requires confidence on the part of the parents. If they themselves do not know how to talk, they cannot very well pass it on.

I am peculiarly, painfully aware of this need for training because I missed out on so much of it. I grew up in a wonderful family, but it was the kind of family where, if you thought someone's opinion was stupid, you said so. We had great debates around the kitchen table, my siblings, parents, and I. I learned how to think in my family, but I cannot say I learned how to talk. I was well into my college years before I learned that telling someone that his favorite movie is incredibly dumb may hurt his feelings.

Perhaps this had more to do with my personal makeup than with my family makeup. I was shy, and often shy people retreat into themselves, unknowingly giving the impression of unfriendly aloofness. In college, I began to realize that other people's image of me did not match my image of myself. Those who did not know me well saw me as stern, aloof, and judgmental. Nobody told me so directly. Once I began to catch on, however, I was hit by the message from all sides.

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This pained me deeply, because it was not true. I knew what was inside me. I was as aloof as a puppy dog. I was soft-hearted, if anything. I cared about people. I craved friendship.

I began to try to rewrite my life. I began consciously to say nice things to people, to let them know that I appreciated and liked them. I tried to act warmly. I began to hold my tongue when I had something to say that might be construed as critical or snobbish.

And I hated it. It felt horribly unnatural. I despised having to watch my words, having to mull over every interaction to see whether I had handled it well and gotten my message across. Why couldn't I just be myself? I was, I suppose, a true child of the sixties: I believed that acting sincerely was enough. Now I felt that I was acting insincerely, putting on an act.

My changes did bring noticeably better results, though. People told me I was different. They told me I seemed warmer, happier. People opened up to me. People sought me out. I liked those differences. And I found that I got used to the act I was putting on. Over months and years it grew comfortable. Eventually, it became liberating. It became me.

For years, I have coached youth soccer. Most of the under-10 kids I get only know how to kick with their right foot. They may be fairly skilled at kicking with their right foot, but when they try to kick left-footed, they look incredibly uncoordinated. Usually they give a pitifully weak kick that dribbles the ball a few yards in front of them. Sometimes they miss the ball entirely and fall on their rears.

As their coach, I know that soccer players have to learn to use both feet. So I encourage them to use the "off" foot. There is no magic trick I can teach them. They just have to do it. If they do, they will get better at it, and one day they will feel as natural kicking with the "off" foot as they do with their primary foot. Learning to talk is the same way. Sometimes you have to make yourself uncomfortable, do things differently—strange as that may feel—until you become comfortable again.

What worries people about such an approach is that it seems calculated and artificial. It seems phony. I am sure that it could be. This was not my experience, however. On the contrary, though it initially felt phony, it helped me develop far deeper and more authentic relationships with people.

When I learned how to stop putting people off with my seeming aloofness, when I learned how to say that I liked people and to show an interest in their lives, I began to make more free and open friendships. They, in turn, made me into a far more confident, friendly person—naturally. I can honestly say that learning how to talk changed my life. It enabled me to be myself.

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At the same time I was changing the way I talked to people, I was studying with a teacher who was a genius at mining dumb comments for gold. I took his seminar in nineteenth-century theology, and I don't think I was the only student at sea among the Schleiermachers and Kierkegaards. Again and again, we made blundering stabs at the thoughtful questions Professor Irish put to us. Often I did not know what my fellow students were trying to say, and I was not sure they did, either.

But Professor Irish could somehow see a kernel of relevance in those answers, draw it out, and move the whole discussion along. He made us feel we had remarkable insight—and when he guided our discussion, we did! I began to see that learning to talk has implications beyond just one-to-one interactions.

When people know how to talk, they are not the only beneficiaries. Society profits. What kind of world would it be if every classroom, every business conference, every committee, every school board meeting, and every legislative body were dominated by people who knew when and how to speak for the mutual edification of the group? I know this for sure: it would be a world where I would not hate meetings so much.

Jesus taught that our words reveal our true selves. He said: "For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him" (Matt. 12:34-35, NIV).

Our speech is never truly accidental. If you listen to someone talk for long enough, you will know what kind of person he or she is. Careless words may reveal more than carefully planned speeches. A mouth opens, and out pops a heart.

If you have ever tried to change your way of talking, you have realized this. Just try, for example, to eliminate harsh words. This does not sound all that difficult. But the unwanted words always crop up in the most unruly way. They rush out of your mouth without warning. Through the effort you will discover how much meanness is in your heart, for it keeps bubbling up. You will have to face not just your careless words, but yourself.

Or try to begin honestly praising someone whom you find hard to affirm. Why won't the words come out? Why is it such an effort simply to say, "I love you," or, "Your friendship is very important to me," or, "I really appreciated your work"? The reason can only be that, at heart, you are not an admiring and a giving person. To change your words, you must change your heart as well. This kind of metamorphosis requires prayer, meditation, the help of loved ones, and above all, the help of God.

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But it also requires a recognition that changing your speech is not merely a superficial and outward activity. It is not "acting nice." It goes to the heart. Your talk is a rudder by which you can steer your life.

Years after I became aware that the way we talk is vastly important, I met the woman who became my wife. Popie was (and is) the warmest person I had ever met. I liked her right away, and I wanted her to like me. She obviously did, and let me know it. But then, she let everyone know how she liked them. She was lavish with her affirmation.

Affirmation is only one way of talking, but it is an extremely important one. Popie's affirmation of others was extravagant. I saw that it made an extraordinary difference in her friends. They were different when she was around them, and they stayed different after she was gone.

I saw this occur in Karen, a woman with whom Popie shared a house. Karen was quiet, almost reclusive. A computer whiz, she loved to stay up all night reading science fiction novels. She was emotionally intense but not terribly easy to talk to. Yet Popie was constantly encouraging her. Karen was a person who easily could get overlooked, but Popie did not overlook her. She liked her—she made a point of liking her—and she told her so.

Many years later, when Karen was happily married and mother to two delightful children, she called Popie one day to thank her for those affirmations, which had made a crucial difference in her life. I was not surprised. I had seen the difference in action. Under Popie's affirmation, Karen had gained confidence and warmth. She had become more relaxed, more herself, and as wonderful as Popie had always seen that she was.

Popie affected lots of people that way. And what was her technique for influencing their lives so powerfully? She said encouraging things to them.

Seeing how Popie affected others (and me), I began to see words as very powerful tools. I had always wanted to be a powerful person. I never knew it was so possible. The key was as close as the words that came out of my mouth.

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The Bible has much to say on this very subject. Many of the Proverbs concern the way we talk. They teach the skill of speaking well in everyday conversation. And the epistle of James states, "If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check." Perfect? Was this sheer hyperbole? I used to think so, until I looked again.

James underlined the thought with two comparisons: "When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body … " (3:2-5, NIV).

These metaphors suggest that we can control our lives by controlling our tongues. Even more startling, they imply that if we are able consistently to choose our words well, we can make our lives all that they are meant to be, and all that God wants them to be.

You cannot direct either a horse or a ship by pushing. They are too big and unwieldy. You must use—skillfully—small instruments of control. For horses, the bit. For ships, the rudder. For human lives, the tongue.


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