The power of words. I mentioned it in my last post, touching on the fact that, when careful thought is put into writing, it can be at once glorious and terrifying. It can become a masterpiece of emotion tugging on our heart strings. In this post, I want to take this in a different direction, and talk of the power of the spoken word. Why? Because it's been nagging at me for a Great Long While, and I... need to write it.



Words are powerful. As writers we live and breathe this, but as people I think we sometimes forget.

Words can hurt. They can sear the heart like hot daggers, leaving us wounded and unsure of ourselves. They can come soaring out of our mouths before we even know what we're saying -- before we take a moment to think about how our words might be taken.

Remember this, friends, when you are talking to others. Remember this when you are talking about others. Especially when they aren't around.

Instead, use your words to build up others. Use them to encourage. Use them to love. Do not forget what people are: beloved children of our heavenly Father, just like you. They're not characters in your stories, free for you to dissect, comment on, and move around at will. I am guilty of this -- mistakenly thinking myself a keen judge of character, I have come to hasty, unfair conclusions about a person. I have let hurtful, biting words fly out of my mouth, and watched them hit their target with a great bang.

And I regret and am ashamed of it.

Every morning, I want to wake up and feel the message "Use your words to love" bouncing around in my heart, with all the fruits of the spirit backing it up. I want it to grow stronger as the day wanes, not fade away as resolve so often does. This is what I pray for, what I yearn for, what I strive for.

Remember this, writers, that each individual person is as deep and colorful as the characters in our books, but they are not to be treated as such. They are to be treated with fairness, kindness, and given -- always -- the benefit of the doubt.

Enough people in this world are being hurt by harsh words, and we've all felt the pain they can inflict in our time. So let us strive to be the ones who don't hurt, but heal. Like our Jesus, our Father who does not judge us, but loves us and showers us with grace.

Healing, not hurting; blessing and encouraging, and striving to be more like Him. In the little things, in the big things, in everything. In our writing, speech, thought, and deed.

Always.

"Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute."

- Franklin Adams

Well.

What more can be said? This is exactly how I feel every moment of every day. Or at least whenever I open a word document. It takes time -- lots of time -- for me to write out one decent paragraph. I'm not happy until it's perfect. Until I can feel the very emotions I'm trying to convey running through my veins, straight to my heart.

Why?

Because emotion is important to me. Words, carefully strung together, create brilliant necklaces of light in my mind. Words, building into sentences that build into paragraphs, can be powerful beyond description. Dickens, Bronte, Lewis, Shakespeare and other classic authors who harnessed the power of words, are examples of this. They chose their words carefully, skillfully, and infused such beauty into their works. Masterpieces.

That is what I strive for in my writing: beauty and emotion. And Beauty isn't always fluffy pretty princess stuff. No way. There is beauty in pain. There is beauty in suffering, hurt, grief, and brokenness. There is beauty in plain old grass and dirt and rain. And words can show us this beauty.



Do you ever stare at a blank piece of paper, thousands of ideas running through your mind, but no idea how to word them? Do you spend hours on one paragraph, till you've got it Just Right?

Well. That's me in a nutshell.