A guest story by Jenae
My mom always told me that I need to think before I speak. She still tells me that. No one ever really has to guess what I am thinking because its either written all over my face or I will just blurt it out. Like a car accident you know is going to happen but can’t stop.
Over the past year, maybe more, I have come to learn how important words are. They can be used to build you up. Lift you higher than you ever thought possible. But they can also be used to crush you into a thousand little pieces. Pieces that are sometimes impossible to put back together. Even well intended words can tear you down.
We have all had someone say to us, “I don’t mean to offend you but…” If you hear yourself saying that, JUST STOP. The next voice you should hear is Thumper’s mom from Bambi telling you, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” Those words can leave a person scarred for life.
Torn down and broken.
A few years ago, someone said something to me that has haunted me ever since. One sentence that left me in a thousand little pieces that seemed hard to pick up. It left me doubting the service I had done and questioning my own self-worth. One sentence. Six words. That’s all it took. I was relieved when I finished that service. Life continued. I slowly started healing. I felt like I was slowly coming back together. Until the next thing hit. Because the next thing always does.
Have you ever experienced that moment when you walked in a room and you knew everyone was just talking about you? I have. And then it was verified by a good friend. And then it was confirmed again by 6 other friends, all on different occasions. A version of a story that was exaggerated and although based on fact had become mostly fictionalized. Words can be used to explain how beautiful a rose is, but make you seem like the thorn on it.
I felt broken again. More words to tear me down and make me feel worthless. I didn’t want to tell my friends, “Let me tell you my side of the story.” I didn’t think that would help anyone. In fact I thought it would make things worse. I felt alone again. Questioning my very self-worth. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn, until a tender mercy came that, like the words that had been spoken to tear me down, has forever changed my life.
A tender mercy in a poem.
Every morning at my kids’ school, the classes take turns reciting a poem or something they have memorized together as a class. My son told me one morning that it was his class’s turn. I was frustrated because of the short notice and that it meant being late for another engagement. I stayed and listened anyway.
I discovered that it wasn’t his class’s turn after all–I was going to have to listen to some other class. As I listened grudgingly, that class recited a poem that brought me to tears, standing in the school gym, trying to hide those tears. I felt the Spirit so strongly and it was a clear answer to months of prayers. That day my Heavenly Father answered my prayers through a poem and twenty-seven 6th graders.
If
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
I was not alone. And if I could stand there strong while others tried to tear me down, I would never be alone. And, let’s face it, there will always be someone there trying to tear me down. But I am a daughter of God. I know it. I have always known it.
I am so grateful for tender mercies. For those rays of sunshine when you are in the darkest places, when the Lord lets you know:
“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
Psalms 147:3
My savior was there to heal my broken heart. He had seen all of my suffering and was there to bind up my wounds. I will always remember the words that lifted me up. The words that help me to know that I am stronger than I ever thought.
“Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
Joshua 1:9
