Words Have Power

"You're such a screw up."

"I wish you'd never been born."

"I was never meant to raise someone else's kid."

Words destroy.

"I love you."

"I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?"

"You really did well with that. You're so neat. Good job."

Words heal.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

Words give life.

At the foundation of reality lies the spoken word. Some physicists say that in the tenth dimension, everything that exists is reduced to sound waves. It may not be too much of a stretch to think those "sounds" could be words (or song). Words have power. We have the ability to create life or destroy it. Maybe not always literally, but definitely figuratively, and sometimes—who knows—even literally.

I remember a friend in fourth grade. We were in band: he played saxophone, I played the French horn. His parents were going through a divorce. He was always talking. One day we got in an argument, and I wanted him to just stop talking. I said something about his parents getting divorced. The silence between us continued forever after that. His mother yelled at me through her tears, his older brother and his friends stood around every corner, threatening to beat me up, and when I tried to talk with him after that, all I got was stony silence. His eyes revealed nothing, except a wall to hide whatever hurt was inside. I tried to apologize, but by then the damage had been done.

Over a decade later I was still haunted by that conversation. I looked him up through some different friends, got his phone number, and gave him a call.

"Hello?"

"Hi. J___? Do you remember me?"

"Remember the conversation we had in fourth grade?"

"Yeah. I remember."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

Silence, then, "Yeah. No problem. That's water under the bridge."

Another scenario.

It was late at night, my uncle had gone to bed hours before, and my aunt and I sat on the couch in the living room, talking. "Nothing good happens in my life," I said.

My aunt was silent a moment, building up steam for what was about to come next. "That's not true. Remember the time we came and got you and you came to live with us?" She continued over the next hour, walking me through several moments in my life that I had been rescued, or kept from some pain, or had received a reward or affirmation. As she talked, something shifted in me. I no longer saw my life as a big tragedy, no longer cast myself in the role of an unwanted child, but saw moments of protection on my life, favor . . . and grace. It was an incredibly healing moment, a night that has changed the direction of my life.

If words have that much power, then we should use them well. My dad used to say, "If you can speak well, you can influence a generation; if you can write well, you can influence a hundred generations." If our words have power, which they do, to heal or destroy, then we owe it to our readers, to the craft, to our words, to ourselves and to countless others to give our very best, to work hard, to be conscientious about the words we use. Good writing requires hard work. In fact, the harder we work, the easier it will be for the reader to understand what we are trying to say, and they may thank us. And maybe they'll even want to read more. We have no idea the impact our words can have.

Choose your words well. Choose to bring life into the world through the things you say. Write well.