By Melanie Shankle
Here’s the thing about me—and I tell you this because you’re my friend and I’m comfortable with this personal character assassination of myself. I say a lot of dumb stuff. I’d like to pretend that my impulse to lie to a cashier at Target® about what kind of dogs I own is a one-off kind of thing, but that’s not really the truth. And it’s not that I go around lying all the time as much as my mouth just gets ahead of my brain, and sometimes this leads to saying things I don’t mean. I tend to talk at a speed that would be defined by Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose as “rapid velocity.” I’m often in need of a filter because my go-to is almost always to be funny, and sometimes funny and kind don’t line up. Not to mention that I have a tendency to use a sarcastic remark to cut the emotional tension in a room, and that can come off as less than empathetic. It’s not that I don’t feel what someone else is feeling as much as I just want to figure out how to bring the mood up a notch.
A few years ago, my best friend Gulley and I went to the rodeo with a bunch of friends. We took several pictures while we were there, and the next day she asked, “Hey, will you text me that picture of the two of us?” And I replied, “I deleted that picture. It wasn’t good of me and, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t any good of you, either.” We now have a term we use when we’re afraid one of us is about to be perfectly and honestly blunt: “Whisper it first.” This comes from a friend of Gulley’s whose mother used to beg her daughter to “Whisper it first” before she said something out loud because she was so prone to blurt out the verbal equivalent of a bull in a china shop.
When God told Moses to go to Pharaoh, Moses said, “Pardon your servant, LORD. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” To which the Lord responded, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? . . . Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say” (Exodus 4:10–12).
God himself promises to teach us what to say. We just have to listen and learn when to speak and when to keep our mouths shut. Because the thing is, the stuff we say comes from somewhere in our hearts, and the heart is the place of convictions, aspirations, dreams, values, hopes, cynicism, doubts, and all the emotions we bring to the table in any given situation.
Even as I write, I’m constantly thinking of the stories I can tell and the stories that aren’t mine to tell. What’s too personal? What could hurt someone I love? Author Anne Lamott once said, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them then they should have behaved better.” While I love that quote in theory, it would play out in a not-so-healthy way in reality. So I edit myself constantly. I’ve also made the decision that there are a whole lot of stories I’ll eventually tell decades from now in a book called, Now That Everybody’s Dead. If only I were as careful in everyday conversation as I am with the written word. But I guess the thing about the written word is that it’s concrete proof of what I say. That’s slightly terrifying because we now live in a world that will find something someone said ten years ago and obliterate them for it without even taking the time to consider if that’s how they still feel or even what they originally meant.
We’ve all read horror stories about someone who Tweets something, probably impulsively, gets on a plane, and then lands hours later to discover they’ve been fired from their job and their whole life has blown up. There have never been more ways to put our words out there on display for people to see and judge what we meant to say or what they think we meant to say without giving us any benefit of the doubt. Our lives are built on words and, most importantly, our relationships are built on words and the grace we extend to each other. We seem to have forgotten that we can disagree and still love. Me calling you an idiot for your political beliefs isn’t going to do one thing to change your mind; it will just change our relationship. We have to let the Spirit dwell in us so that we can have peace, patience, joy, love, kindness, and self-control. Imagine how different Twitter and the world would be if we all kept that in mind and acted even remotely reasonable and open to hearing someone else’s point of view.
We can’t take back our words. When someone says something mean, unkind, or untrue, it takes time to rebuild trust. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. From now on, the cashier at Target will always think I have labs. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean she will quit asking me a million questions about them every time I check out.
But thinking about all of this helps me to remember to pray:
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
(Psalm 19:14)
The bright side is knowing that our words are powerful and carry a heavy weight, which is why we need to do our best to use them wisely. Because, as the saying goes, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
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Adapted from On the Bright Side: Stories about Friendship, Love, and Being True to Yourself by Melanie Shankle. Click here to learn more about this book.
Big Mama blog founder and New York Times bestselling author Melanie Shankle helps us sort through our questions about being true to ourselves in a world gone crazy and what matters the most in the end.
These days, so many voices tell us what to do, what to think, and what kind of parent or friend or spouse to be that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and defeated. Somewhere in the midst of online arguments and crazy politics and the ups and downs of life, we’ve lost sight of the gifts that are all around us: kindness, love, mercy, and joy.
In On the Bright Side, Melanie Shankle reminds us of the unchanging principles we can count on in a changing world. These are lessons that Melanie has learned along the way about how to find all the joy that life has to offer — and why encouragement is never something to keep to ourselves. Exploring topics such as dealing with comparisons, when life doesn’t turn out like we expected, and how to find your people, Melanie invites us to lead with love in all areas of our lives.
This delightful memoir highlights the joys of life told in Melanie’s down to earth, relatable, and totally enjoyable style. On the Bright Side is a how-to guide to knowing — and living — what matters most.
Melanie Shankle writes regularly at The Big Mama blog and is the New York Times bestselling author of four previous books, including Nobody’s Cuter than You. Melanie is a graduate of Texas A&M and loves writing, shopping at Target, checking to see what’s on sale at Anthropologie, and trying to find the lighter side in every situation. Most of all, she loves being the mother of Caroline, the wife of Perry, and the official herder of two wild dogs named Piper and Mabel. The five of them live in San Antonio, Texas.
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