I’ve learned so much about myself in the past year. It’s truly amazing to trek through life thinking I’ve made all of this progress or feel that I have already gained so much wisdom from many hard lessons and humbling experiences and to consistently find there is ever more to learn.

I’ve learned more about the art of open, honest, gracious conversation and the value that it brings to those engaged in it. That saying things out loud, as they are, takes away their power to cause us grief or anxiety or fear. That saying them can cultivate beauty.

It’s not as simple as I once thought, either. I used to think that simply saying it was enough. But even words said with good intention can be harmful when said in haste.

Like a seed planted and given time will either sprout a healthy plant or will shrink away, the time I take to wait another minute or hour or day or week to say those words can bear life-giving fruit when I take the time to cultivate it. 

My words have power and the more time I take to craft them, the more significance I give to them, and the more beauty I create as God’s glory is amplified through them.

I’ve only recently come to realize the importance of this. My careless words have cut others and myself deeply. They have burned bridges and destroyed friendships. I think a lot about the conversations and words of the past and the impact I made because of them.

For the conversations and words that have hurt and destroyed, I am sorry.

For the conversations and words left unsaid, I am sorry.

But I cannot change what has been said, as much as I desperately wish I could gather them all back up and bury them away for the rest of time.

Instead, I now look for opportunities to establish a different kind of impact with my words: life-giving and fruitful. 

How can the things that I speak or write plant the seeds for life to be grown? How can I ensure that they bear fruit? 

I begin by rooting my words in Scripture. In the words of Jesus, the Word of Life (1 John 1:1-4). The ageless, timeless, Spirit-inspired Word of God is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training that I might be equipped to do His good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). 

Speaking life doesn’t always look like saying what feels right in the moment, or what you think the other person wants to hear. Often, it looks like having the difficult conversations and saying the hard truths in love and trusting God to harvest what, how, and when he knows best. 

Jesus spent his entire ministry speaking words that were equally difficult to hear and yet, life-giving. 

For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” — Matthew 12:35b-36

And so, I take one step at a time. Taking hold of each moment and word and thought and cultivating beauty instead of destruction, love instead of hate, and grace instead of vengeance. And I will fail, and so will you. But the call and mission to serve one another and share the wealth of what Jesus has done is infinitely worthy and can bear much fruit because of what I say.