Domineering, nagging and suffocating.
Day after day he would have to endure her with her attitude. She never touched him physically, but every time she opened her mouth to say something to him, it felt like daggers piercing him. On and on she would go. Relentless in her demands. Unrelenting in letting him know just how feeble, incompetent and inept his efforts were.
He felt trapped. She surrounded him with her torrent of verbal attacks. He didn’t feel any way out. He had a recurring dream where he would be told of her death by an accident of some sort and the feeling of elation and relief. Only to wake up to find she was still alive and he would cry himself to the shower.
Conceited, contemptuous and demeaning.
It would start in the morning. He would demand his breakfast to be made promptly and if it was a minute late he would complain as to why she couldn’t follow simple instructions. He would make snide comments about how she looked. How she put on weight. How she looked ungainly. How the colours accentuated her dreary face. He didn’t know it was dreary because of the incessant drip-feed of verbal toxins she had to take from him.
Even when they went out to meet friends, he would not have any problems barking at her if she said the slightest thing wrong. She could hear him complaining to his male friends about all her inadequacies. Any right she did would soon be overwhelmed with him sarcastically putting the effort in the context of her usual blunders and failings. He never touched her physically, but the traumas were real.
These are pictures of some issues that people experience sometimes in intimate relations and sometimes in ongoing interactions with colleagues, family members, etc. The power of words shape those relationships and can have a significant influence on people. Despite being wonderfully and beautifully created, any beauty is slowly eroded over time with the continual exposure to the ongoing verbal digs.
Thankfully these are not the only words available. There are others available. Coming from a source that completely dispels all those horrific portrayals of the worse of humanity. This source knows how to speak words of grace, peace and mercy for the building of others, not their erosion.
Our challenge is to identify the source and invest significant time learning how to measure our words carefully. Measure them to see if they will erode or enhance.
(Photo by Ben White on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 