By Davalynn Spencer
We’ve all heard the old saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
It’s a big fat lie.
I make my living with words, lining them up in just the right order and teaching workshop students to do the same. Sometimes I pass out a survey at the beginning of the class that helps me get to know people better and see how they use words.
Survey questions include:
“What’s your greatest weakness when it comes to writing?”
“If you could travel back in time to witness a historical event, which one would you choose?”
“If you could take back one sentence you’ve spoken, what would it be?”
That last question is always a gut-buster. In the anonymity of a writing course, people tend to be honest. They write from their soul, and truth leaks out through the cracks in their answers.
A few of those answers have been:
“I quit.”
“I wish you were dead.”
“I’ll buy it.”
“I will never amount to anything.”
“I don’t love you.”
“I can visit Grandma tomorrow. She’ll still be there.”
She wasn’t.
Of all the answers to this question over the years, the most often repeated has been, “I hate you.” Sometimes these three words were directed at a spouse or a friend, often to a parent. Regardless of the recipient, they always left a festering wound, doing more harm to the speaker than to the object of their anger.
Somewhere down deep inside us, we regret hateful words uttered in the proverbial heat of the moment. We instinctively know they carry enough weight to break a spirit.
And we know the old adage should really say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can crush my soul.”
Words are more like stones than we think. Hurtful words can pile up and weigh a person down. Helpful words can lay a strong, supportive foundation.
God help us choose our words as carefully when we speak as when we line them up in our books and short stories, picking just the right ones to evoke, inspire, or paint a picture.
Some of our words may stay with readers—and hearers—the rest of their lives.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).
Excerpted from Always Before Me, 90 Story-Devotions for Women, by Davalynn Spencer.
As a child, Davalynn Spencer fell in love with horses. As a teen, she fell in love with a cowboy. That’s how she became the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters and an award-winning rodeo journalist. Today she writes cowboy romances because the Western way of life is down to earth, honest, and God-fearing—even in this contemporary world. She is a two-time Will Rogers Medallion winner who lives along Colorado’s Front Range with mouse detectors Annie and Oakley, and she can’t stop #lovingthecowboy.