Words & People

Words are powerful, and for me, as a word-oriented person, they are especially so. When I hear words or read words it is in my nature to take them in for digestion, to try and make sense of them, and then to attempt to reconcile them with all of the parts that make up me. 

Words can define. 

Words can build up.

Words can tear down; destroy. 

One of the hardest things for me has been to disallow words and the people who say them from having control over me. 

I grew up in a home where ill words were mixed with healthy words, and healthy words with ill. I have always taken words seriously, and so my insides got mixed up along the way from the mixed messages I would hear. 

It was a significant day in my life, in my soul, when I grasped that I did not have to be a slave to the unhealthy words that were spoken to me. 

I learned to fight back in my mind by finding a truth to defeat the ill words and to cling to that truth rather than the ill words I had heard. 

And, I have discovered a lot of freedom in the reality that God's words are the only words that will stand for all of time and eternity.

So I don't need to fear words or the people who speak them. 

They will only have power over me if I give that authority to them. And I don't have to.