When my children were small, they were outside with my husband who
was working in the garden. After setting the food I had prepared on
the table, I opened the door and hollered to let them know lunch was ready.
I then turned around and grabbed the pitcher of ice tea and set it on the
table, somehow setting it on the edge of the table. It was like a slow-motion
video. I saw it go over and as it hit the floor the pitcher shattered and ice
tea spattered up the wall and all over the newly mopped floor. "Oh
crap!" slipped from my mouth just as my young sons got to the screen door.
One of them quickly turned to their daddy and yelled at the top of his lungs,
"Daddy, Mommy just cussed!" Technically I didn't believe I used curse
words--slang yes, and maybe even a bit vulgar. When I said that to my husband,
he laughed and pointed out two possible reasons the kids thought I cussed.
First, it wasn't a word we allowed them to use. So, they assumed I was cussing if
I used a forbidden word. Second, the emotional and impulsive way I spoke the
word made it feel like a curse word to the kids.
Ironically, I had grown up in a family where some of grownups
cursed when they got angry and some simply cursed in social settings as they
told stories. When I became a believer, I tried really hard not to curse. And,
as a teen, I even became a somewhat obnoxious, self-appointed chief of the
speech police force for my family of origin.
In college, I had a Christian English major as a roommate who was
both intelligent and quick witted. I asked her one time if she ever cursed
because I had never heard her do so. She said she didn't curse since she
believed most people cursed because they had a limited vocabulary. And believe
me, she could express herself and her emotions quite well without ever using curse words. She was amazing and could verbalize something deep and significant in a
humorous way that made me smile, only to realize later how important her words were. I also had another dear friend who, in the eight years I was
around her, never once cursed in front of me. I didn't realize it until one day
we were in the middle of doing something and something happened that would have
made cursing a real temptation for anyone, but all she said was, "Oh, my
soul!" And it didn't even sound like a curse word, just a calm acceptance
of a problem we would have to work through to proceed. I loved that one chose
to educate herself with a vocabulary to give herself the ability to fully
communicate the emotions that were aroused in difficult situations, and the
other communicated a humble acceptance of circumstances that were less than favorable, frustrating, or infuriating to us humans. For the most part, I tried
to emulate the speech of these ladies and many other godly women I knew.
A few years ago, I decided to work through past trauma and in that
work I found a host of emotions including rage with in me that I didn't know
existed. And along with those emotions, curse words I had heard early on, but
never thought I would say again, rose to the surface. For a couple of years
those words showed up a lot in my journal, which was written in the format of
letters to God. I was a bit uncomfortable doing that, until one day I watched
my young grandson ask his mom to give him back an object she had taken away
from him. Because He was around 18 months old, he had a limited vocabulary and
he kept reaching out with his hands indicating he wanted it. She shook her head
no and then he began to throw a little fit without any tears. She told him no
again and then he began to cry great big crocodile tears. When she still said
no, he began to desperately point to the tears as if they could indicate to her
how much he wanted the object she had taken from him. In seeing him, I realized
that because I had a hard time getting to my tears, I had been using curse
words to try to convey to God how angry and how hurt I was.
Then, one day I was discussing something painful with my
counselor. She asked me if I had journaled about it. I told her that I had
tried to journal several times, but I couldn't find words to express the depths
of hurt and anger I was experiencing and had just cried an ugly cry--the cry where shoulders shake, and groans surface, and snot runs as fast as the
tears. I told her that in my mind all I could do was picture myself standing on
a tall mountain, screaming in anguish, wanting to be sure God could hear and
see me and know the pain I felt. She took me to another counselor's office and
showed me a beautiful picture of a lady sitting on a garden bench crying and
catching her tears in a vile. The artist had painted it to depict Psalm 56:8,
"You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they
not in your book?" To know that God saw my tears and cares was a soothing
balm to my pained soul.
I had gone from living numb, to getting angry about the ugly,
hurtful things I had experienced, to acknowledging the deep pain and the grief
caused by what had occurred and, believe me, that grief ran deep. During that
time of facing the past wounds and laying them at the cross, Romans 8:26 took
on new meaning to me, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For
we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes
for us with groanings too deep for words." When I couldn't find the words
to express the anguish I experienced the Spirit could intercede for me. How
awesome is that?
I hope that every person who faces deep pain, loss, and confusion
finds the beauty of the truth of these verses for themselves. God hears the pain and the anger we experience
and express through words. And, when there are not words strong enough to
express the deep pain in our hearts, He sees the tears and hears the silent groans of our hearts and the Spirit's prayers being poured out on our behalf.
Sometimes we want to play down our emotions, but I believe God is every bit as concerned about our hearts and the
emotions we experience as He is about the thoughts we think and the words we speak. The cries of the cross are proof of that. I believe
our God is big enough to handle the emotions we feel and loving enough to help
us manage them with His truth. Maybe that is why Paul wrote, "That I may
know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being conformed to His death."
I am at a different place in my life and still striving to use
godly speech, trusting that if I can't find a word powerful enough to convey my
fear, sorrow, grief, or anger, that I can trust that God sees how deep those
things can run in me. And, at the times I feel alone and desperate to be heard, I
can still draw on that mountaintop dream in which I cry out to Him with my
heart and let the Spirit intercede for me. He knows my heart and He knows what
I need even more than I do. I don't want my grandkids to think of me as a potty-mouthed grandma, I want them to remember me as a "Jam" who spoke words
that blessed and drew their hearts toward the heart of God.
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