By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
I remember the day a dump truck backed up my driveway, extended its hydraulic arms, and spilled a stream of crushed rock down the center of the muddy lane—just exactly as I’d ordered. Someone had been carrying off my gravel one chipped rock at a time. Either that, or the clay soil was swallowing it.
Grateful, I watched from the sidelines as one little rock slipped out of the truck’s belly. Then another. Then a flood.
A ¾-inch piece of aggregate doesn’t weigh much. Dig into a pile of it with a rake, and they weigh a lot.
Words are like that too. The right words can lay a strong and firm foundation. But the wrong words can pile up and be nearly impossible to remove.
As a college writing instructor at the time of the driveway delivery, I often began each course with a demonstration of how weighty words could be. An introductory survey helped me get to know the students while reading a sample of their writing.
Some of my questions focused on the course:
“What career are you pursuing?”
“What’s your greatest weakness when it comes to writing?”
Other questions were just for fun:
“If you could travel back in time to witness a historical event, which one would you choose?”
Of the twelve questions on the survey, the last was my favorite:
“If you could take back one sentence you’ve spoken, what would it be?”
By that point, students were comfortable with answering non-threatening questions and were prone to honesty.
Their answers were weighty.
“I quit.”
“I wish you were dead.”
“I’ll buy it.”
“Will you marry me?”
“I will never amount to anything.”
“You’ve ruined my life.”
“I don’t love you.”
“I can visit grandma tomorrow. She will still be there.”
Turned out, she wasn’t.
Of all the answers to this question over my years of teaching, the most often repeated answer was, “I hate you.”
Those three words were frequently directed toward a spouse. Sometimes a parent. But regardless of their target, they left a wound in the speaker that festered to the surface the first day of my class.
Somewhere deep inside us, we regret hateful, misspoken words uttered in the proverbial heat-of-the-moment. We instinctively know they carry the weight that can break a spirit.
We know that the old adage should really say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can crush my soul.”
Back in the driveway, I knew the rain and snow had contributed to my vanishing layer of rock, helping the mud absorb it the same way we absorb words that build us up and make us feel appreciated, or bury us beneath an unwieldly weight of insignificance.
Innocuous little things, rocks and words.
Choose wisely.
The words of the reckless pierce like swords,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Prov. 12:18 NIV
~
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The Bible was still open atop the desk as Grace had left it before. Settling into the old leather chair, she felt a sense of passage, as if entering a hall of wisdom visited by successive generations through the years. She smoothed the pages on either side, the same pages in Jeremiah that had greeted her before, but this time she saw the inked notation in the margin: Isaiah 55:8–9.
Her skin prickled at the handwritten reference, as if her grandfather was sending her a personal message. Quickly she flipped the pages back to the book of the prophet Isaiah and read the verses:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Disappointment sank into her middle. That was no answer. What did these words even mean? What had her grandfather found in them that was so important he would connect them to Jeremiah’s promise that God thought about them?
She flipped ahead to Jeremiah. “Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
As soft as a whisper the directive came, simple and clear. Trust Me.
The words dropped like tiny pebbles in the pool of her soul, spreading ever wider to secret wounds of inadequacy, hinting that she was noticed. Understood. Loved. ~Covering Grace
Inspirational Western Romance – where the hero is heroic.
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(c) 2025 Davalynn Spencer, all rights reserved.
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