The Power of Your Words

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about words. Words have a lot of power. In a split second, words have the power to change a person’s mood, day, or even their life either positively or negatively. Proverbs 18:21 says, The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Stanford University recently did a study about the words spoken into the lives of children. On average, in households where parents are professionals and highly educated, 80% of the words spoken by parents to children are positive. Only 20% are negative. Children’s ears are filled with statements about how smart, fast, beautiful, or clever they are.
In the average middle class family, where parents have some form of college education, a child will hear about 50/50 of positive to negative statements. However, in the average lower class family, where there is little education beyond high school, a child will hear negative statements nearly 80% of the time. Only 20% of the things people say around them will be positive. These children’s ears are filled with negativity: you are dumb. You are slow. You are ugly. You are unwanted. You are not enough.
I found this absolutely heartbreaking. This very concept flies in the face of the concept of the tremendous value that God sees in every single one of us. Children who are constantly bombarded with lies that they have no value often begin to believe them. I am reminded of a scene from The Help where Abileen Clark repeats to the child whom she has been hired to care for, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” While her grammar is lacking, Abilene realized the value of speaking truth into this child’s life. My challenge to you today is to break the statistic. Speak truth and positivity into the life of your children and the children who you come in contact with.

Home Team

Recently, I read an article about knowing who your "Home Team" is. The premise of this article was that you can't do everything for everyone, nor should you. However, you need to be able to decide who makes that cut off. Now even as you're reading this, some of you already have a person or two in your head. I know when I read the article, I did.
My best friend. The one who has been there over the past 10+ years through thick and thin. The one who has seen me cry over the stupidest things and been the shoulder to cry on when the not so stupid things came along. When she gets married, I will wear whatever she decides to put me in, no matter how terrible I look. When her kids are born, I will drive however many miles it takes to be there. She is definitely on my home team. She might even be team captain. I'm sure you have someone like that, too.
But tonight, the people on my mind are the ones that seem to sneak in. They appear when you need them most. For those of you who don't know, I've gone through some big changes in my life recently. At the beginning of January I packed up all my stuff and moved from Knoxville, TN to Gallipolis, OH. This wasn't part of my plan by any means, but I'm learning that most of the time my plan is all wrong. God led me to this place and I love it. I am the new Children's Minister at Gallipolis Christian Church (Children's ministry also was not part of the plan...) and I could not be happier.
Moving five hours away from the people who you've been closest to for the past year, if not more changes things. This made me evaluate my home team. And for a while I wasn't sure who that was any more for a while. Its a lot harder to invest in someone's life from a distance, right?
Tonight, I got a glimpse of what my home team is starting to look like. You see, there are some people who are only on the team for a season or two. This doesn't make them bad people. They're time is just shorter. My team has lost some people, but its gaining some new ones. This change isn't easy, but it is beautiful. Yet, I am being reminded that while it is harder to invest in a life from a distance, there are those people who still do. Thank you. There are a handful of you in my life and I hope you know who you are. You have gotten me through some of the most difficult times in my life, and you are the shoulder to lean on in this time of change in my life.
So this post is for all of you who have been a part of my home team, whether for a lifetime or only a season. Thank you. You have helped shape me into who I am. And I challenge you. Who is your home team? Who is the person you can call at 2 am? Who is the one who knows which ice cream to buy after a break up or who knows just the right words to say when someone has let you down? Invest in those people. You don't have to be everything to everyone, but for just a moment, you may be everything to someone.