Skip to main content

I used to have this habit. It was a bad habit, but it felt like a gift. It felt like raw, unleashed, talent.
Sarcasm.
Biting, hard-hitting, cruel. I could dig down into peoples skin and come away with chunks of self-esteem like no one else. I was what- fourteen, fifteen years old- and yet I could use sarcasm like I’d been trained in it in the mountains of Peru for forty years.
(As far as I know, there is not a sarcasm training camp in the mountains of Peru, but at the age of fifteen I probably could have started one on my own.)


But, of course, it couldn’t last.
Not the talent- that has stayed with me. Still, like a flash of malevolent genius, retorts will come to me immediately. I just bite my tongue, now. Sometimes literally. Clenched jaw, pained smile, closed eyes, trying not to speak in the face of something so incredibly presumptuous, immature, blind, or uncalled for that it takes far more willpower than I possess to keep quiet.

Hey, Holy Spirit, thanks for being here tonight.
That’s the difference.
The difference between fifteen-year-old Sarah, cruel and brilliant with her words, and twenty-one-year-old Sarah, stumbling in the ways of learning to be kind, is only one thing: The Holy Spirit has been teaching me, for years, to control my speech.
It is not easy, and it is certainly not fun. I once reveled in the joy of the verbal fights I could start, and better yet, WIN. It was a delight. I was powerful, and I loved that. But see now…now it is BETTER. Not easier, or more fun- but better.
I have more joy, more peace, more love towards other people when I am not continually cutting them down with a God-given gift for putting words together well.

I am still good with words. I am just trying to choose, through the strength that only God and His Spirit can provide, to use them for good.
It sounds cheesy, I know- “using my powers for good,” and all that. I don’t mean to be cliche. I am very serious. If you are good at something, you are using it for good or bad. So choose. Because if you are not intentionally doing good, odds are you will find yourself unintentionally (or in my case, unfortunately, quite intentionally) doing harm.

Sometimes- often, really- I have to revert back to what a childhood friend’s mother told her daughter and I as she buckled us into the backseat of their car, after a day at the park. "If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything."
Silence is a great alternative to sarcasm, until I learn to speak with grace. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I love you so much, and I am completely devoted to you, and I know that you’re the man God had for me to marry- BUT, even if none of that was true, there are still hundreds of good reasons for me to marry you. And this fudge is two of them. My eternal thankfulness when Arthur made me fudge

Pause Before You Post: Representing yourself responsibly and honestly online

  When I was about eleven years old I went to summer camp for the first time. Before my sister and I left, my mother talked to us about something. She explained that we needed to mindful of our behavior at camp, not only because it is important to be kind and respectful, but also because we would be a representation of both our family and Christ to the people around us. That stuck with me.   Now, with so many of us daily browsing and posting to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and blogs such as this, our representation is no longer limited to the people we are around in person- it is far-reaching, even global at times. It is certainly a far more widespread representation of yourself to post on the internet than it is to say something in person; on the internet, the dozens or hundreds of people you are connected with may see it. That is an enormous audience.   I feel very strongly that we need to be mindful of that audience, of that re...
Sometimes I look at other girls and wonder how they get such perfect curls in their hair. Then I remember that they get up early and curl it. I just get up late, squint at the mirror, and say “Please be curly, please be curly!” Well, THERE’S your problem.