Words

It's a New Year!  2011 started quietly for us.  Well, as quietly as life in Memorial Southwest Hospital can be.  My 92 year-old Dad fell and broke his left femur on December 28th, and was recovering from surgery to repair the break with a rod and pins.



Here's Dad looking really good in the pre-op waiting area.

By January 1st he was in a great deal of pain, not from his leg, but from his impacted digestive system.  Practically constant griping pain gripped his belly; so between Dad's beeping pulse oxymeter, personal television, and his genuine gasps and groans and pleas for the pain to go away, his room was anything but quiet.  Poor sweet suffering man.
One time as I sat next to his bed, his struggle with the pain overwhelmed him to the point that he exclaimed, "Damn it!"  That would be the first time in my life I ever heard a curse word on his lips.  Immediately he apologized for cursing.  In just a little bit, Dad was unsettled and kind of "fussy."  I don't know how else to describe it--not child-like, but fussy, which is more than understandable for the pain he was experiencing.  He stopped practically in mid-sentence and looked up to say, "I don't know why I'm being so contrary."  At that moment, I caught a glimpse of his mother, my Grandmother Beatty, addressing one of her children and chiding that little one for being contrary.  I'm sure that's all she had to say in order to restore order.  That's all Dad needed to say to calm himself down, even in a place of pain.

Whether used to curse or bless, words carry great power.  God has been teaching me about the power of my words lately.  Now that Dad has moved into a residential rehabilitation facility, I'm spending mornings with him and the staff of the facility as well.  Just a few days after his arrival there, he pressed the call button for someone to come help him.  We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.  After nearly an hour, I pulled on my big girl panties and left his room to find help or know the reason why not!  When Dad's nurse appeared, we walked to his room while I told her he had been waiting almost an hour.  I'm sure she could feel my dissatisfaction, even though the actual words I said were an unvarnished statement of fact.  She turned to me and said very sternly, "M'am!"  Her one word broke loose all the frustration and fear of the past 10 days, and out they all tumbled in tears down my hot cheeks.  I was hurting, and my words hurt.  She was busy, overloaded, and dealing with an emergency unknown to me.  I apologized to her, and with our words and a hug we were able to mend the rift.

Words are powerful enough to define a situation as well.  Or re-define, as the case may be.  Hyperbole has a way of escalating the way one views a situation.  But, really, which comes first . . .?  Does the situation mandate the verbiage, or does the word choice escalate the issue?  I heard someone describe her employment as "the job from hell."  I heard another say that waiting [for the next daily event] was "a nightmare."  I had to ask for clarification on that one.  How is being in a well-lit room with adequate ventilation, comfortable seating, ice water, coffee, chocolate, and a number of diversions including a tv remote in hand "a nightmare?"  Cataclysmic words like "horrible" and "disaster" are better left to serve situations like floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, unexpected fatal accidents; not so much a time when it took three attempts to reach someone by phone.

Ughh.  Here I am, writing words that express my opinion and criticize the words of others . . .
God is also showing me how important it is to hold my tongue.  "Be quick to listen and slow to speak."  Oh, these are lessons I need to learn so much!!

God, help me to be aware of the power of words to bless, not curse.  Help me to use words that heal, encourgage, and speak the truth of a situation.  And I pray, Lord God, that the names of people--especially those I love--are safe in my mouth.  WORDS are an issue of my heart, and not my vocal cords.