Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you.
—Deuteronomy 5:16
Family is a weird thing, isn’t it? Some of you live in homes with a mom and a dad, and your older brother is the high school quarterback and your little sister is adorable twenty-four hours a day. For others, family is a painful topic, one laced with words like “abandonment” and “death” and “loneliness.” Or you live with your grandparents. Or just your dad.
As for me? I have a mom and a dad and two younger sisters. Well, we actually have two other “sisters”—my cousins Jake and Julianne. For the last few years, these two cousins have spent more time with my parents than their own, including all holidays and pretty much any time we all go to dinner, so we consider them our sisters.
Yes, Jake is a boy, and yes, we call him our sister. And yes, we did make him wear footie pajamas one year on Christmas Eve, and yes, he was twenty-four years old. Julianne lived with my parents for the last two years of high school, and I’d like to publicly complain that she took my childhood bedroom. So for two whole years, every time I went to visit my parents, I had to sleep in the GUEST room. Phfff. Rude.
(Actually, it was fine and I totally love Julianne, so I’m not nearly as annoyed as I always told her I was. Hey, I’m the big sister. I gotta give her a little friendly trouble, right?)
So my family is both traditional and non-traditional. But you know what? I don’t know that any of us would call our families “traditional,” would we? Because your grandfather may live in the basement or you may be in a foster home. Maybe you were adopted, your parents are divorced, or you have seventeen siblings.
And while few of us would claim to have a traditional family, there is something sweet about the idea that we each know our own normal. I think my family is normal (except for the fact they are all weirdos), because that is the only family I have known.
My family gets the best and the worst versions of me—and I get the best and worst of them. When things are good, they are really good and we laugh and have a blast being together. When things aren’t good, they are disastrous and people are hurt and crying and annoyed and … yikes.
I wish I could tell you that conflict goes away when you grow up, but it hasn’t for us. Maturity has helped, calming our nerves and our tongues, but it hasn’t removed our humanness.
As you already know from my all-too-public apology, my sisters (the two actual ones, not the cousin-sisters) are the VIPs of my angry words—Very Injured Persons. Hopefully that was more limited to my teen years and we’re on the upside of it now.
It’s tough to use your words well in your own home. I know. I get it. But that’s our goal, that’s our heart, as girls who want to speak love with our lives. So let’s talk about the different ways we can really do that for the people we call our family.
I was never the kid who talked back to my parents. At least, not that I can remember. Maybe my parents would say different, but I was not the defiant type. I would get mad at them, sure—I had my moments—but I didn’t tend to yell at them or say ugly things in general.
Instead, I hid my words from them. I concealed my worries and my struggles and my mistakes (or so I thought). I said what I thought was the right thing, not the true thing.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I was a quiet and demure child or teenager who just sat where she was supposed to sit and did what she was supposed to do. Not at all, actually. I think I was a fairly major pain in the backside. Here was my issue (prepare yourself; it’s weird).
I spent most of my young Christian life feeling like I had to earn people’s love, including God’s and my parents’. Also, I thought if I was going to be a “good Christian example” to my friends at school, I was not allowed to make mistakes or have any struggles in public. So I would work really, really hard to say and do the right thing anytime I was around my friends, because I felt pressure to behave in a way that I understood represented God best. (P.S.—that’s not true. The best way to represent God to the world is to be YOU—on good days and bad. He is seen in your strengths but even better in your weaknesses.) Because I didn’t grasp that, I ignored grace and focused on works.
Obviously, my life was really fun. No mistakes allowed and all love earned? It was a great time. (That’s sarcastic, by the way.)
Because of this I worked very hard to be perfect at school. (Which is one reason I didn’t always tell the truth—I didn’t want to look like I ever made a mistake or had any issues.) So when I got home? That was my time to relax emotionally. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but it is like I was performing all day long and my house was the only place I was allowed to be human, so BOY, WAS I HUMAN.
(If you relate to this at all, please read Graceful: Letting Go of Your Try-Hard Life by Emily P. Freeman. Wowsa, does she get teenage Annie.)
It wasn’t that I was mean to my parents. It was just that I was a bit aloof most of the time. I wanted to rest and not have to be perfect. But I didn’t want to be imperfect, because that gave them the chance to not love me. So I decided it was better to protect myself from that and pull back than to be fully invested in my family and risk being rejected.1
My words, how I spoke to my parents, had far more to do with me just wanting a break from the life of attempted perfection.
I think my parents were hurt by my withdrawal, but some families get hurt just as much by aggression and anger. I used to spend the night frequently at my best friend Connie’s house. Her parents were divorced and honestly, in the five or so years that we were close, I don’t ever remember meeting her dad. But I do clearly remember being so taken aback and frightened when she would scream (and I mean SCREAM) at her mother. She would say the most awful things, and, to be honest, her mom would too.
I’m not friends with Connie anymore. I’ve looked for her multiple times on social media and can’t find her anywhere. But I wonder about how those words have affected their relationship now that she and her mom are both adults.
And listen, we could talk all day about how words from our parents have hurt us. I’m sure you could and I know I can. But the honest truth is that I still honor my parents and love them, so I don’t want to write those stories.
Also, as we’ve talked about, this isn’t a defensive book where we talk about all the ways that other people have used words to hurt us in our lives. Yes, how your parents speak to you does and will affect you. But in the end, that doesn’t determine how you use YOUR words with them. If your parents are loving and cuddly and always tell you how totes adorbs you are, it is probably easier for you to use kind and loving words toward them. If your parents are mean and horrible and abusive, it is terribly difficult and you might be tempted to treat them and others the same way, or not even express your true feelings. I’m not discounting that pain at all.
But if you ask me, whether you refuse to bite your tongue or refuse to release it, both are sins. When you spit venom, you are sinning. When you deceive by withholding words, you are sinning. I wish we got to behave based on how others behave toward us, but unfortunately that’s not the rules of this game called the Christian life.
(Having a great time yet? Stick with me.)
Check out this verse:
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you.
Do you know what I love about this verse? It’s the first of the Bible’s Ten Commandments that has a promise attached. Unfortunately, it doesn’t also have a caveat attached that says, “If your parents are awesome and perfect …” Instead, God puts it to us straight.
How you treat your parents says a lot about who you are AND who you will become. If you can attempt to be loving with your words, honoring your parents in your decision making and in your life, God promises that it will go well for you.
Does that mean rainbows and unicorns and Easter-shaped candies in your every day? I wish, but no. It just means that life will be better if you can find a way to speak love to your parents.
(Do I need to say again how much I KNOW THIS ISN’T EASY FOR EVERYONE? I know. I hope you know that I know. But again, it doesn’t change what the Bible says, y’all. It just doesn’t.)
And if you don’t live with your parents, but have another day-to-day authority figure God has placed in your life who fills the role of “parent,” this applies to you too.
What does it look like to honor your parents, particularly with your words? Here are a few examples:
• Share honestly, yet calmly, when you disagree with them.
• Tell them “thank you” when they buy you something or take you somewhere.
• Bring up fun memories of the past.
• Put your phone away when your parents are talking to you.
• Be respectful of your parents in front of other people as well as at home.
• Speak kindly about them on social media, even if you are mad, don’t use the internet to air your family’s issues.
• Write an encouraging note to your mom or dad—it doesn’t have to be long, just a sticky note saying one thing you love about them or a Bible verse that you are praying for your parent.
• PRAY FOR YOUR PARENTS.
And please remember—before they were your parents, and even now, they were and still are two humans who grew up and fell in love and have been hurt and have had both amazing days and heartbreaking ones. They have issues and baggage and memories that you may never know but may affect you every day. You don’t need to earn their love by being perfect, just like they don’t need the pressure from you to be perfect either. Be full of grace with them, on the good days and the bad.
(FYI: I know that there are some only children out there. Even if you aren’t a sister yourself, can I suggest you read this section anyway? You might soon mentor a young woman who needs help being a better sister, or when you grow up, you might be a mom who will need to raise your kids to treat each other well. So don’t skip over this just because you aren’t a sister. Check out 1 Timothy 5:1–2.)
Before we talk about what to say to your siblings, let’s talk about why we have them.
I don’t know.
I don’t know exactly why God made it so that multiple people come from the same parents. But from the first parents, Adam and Eve, there were siblings. And those first ones? Yikes. Not so good. If you read Genesis 4, you will see that the first brothers ever to exist on earth didn’t get along. In fact, the older brother ended up murdering the younger one. Whoa.
So it’s been a struggle from the beginning, if that makes you feel any better.
And while I don’t know why, I think God made siblings because:
• it’s nice to have someone else who has grown up under the same roof as you
• they are some of the only friends you will likely have for your entire life
• siblings make you the most crazy, but they also can be the best practice for learning to love someone on the hard days
And honestly, those are just my guesses. God does a lot of stuff that I don’t totally understand but appreciate. Like giraffes and watermelons.
Whether or not you believe it today, your siblings are a gift. Whether they are the kind of gift that makes your life a better place or the kind of gift that makes you trust God more, God made your family and gave you those exact brothers and/or sisters. They aren’t perfect, and in some cases they are really unkind. I know that. As you’ve heard me say before (and I’m sure it made you crazy then too), we unfortunately don’t get to decide how we speak based on how other people speak to us. So your job is to use your words well to be the best sister you can be.
We could spend a whole book talking about sisters in the Bible and how they used their words. Instead, I’ve simplified it for you a little bit. When I look at these sisters, certain things jump out at me about how they acted, how they used their words. These examples give me a chance to choose—Do I react how I WANT to or react how I NEED to?
While the women in the Bible are also flawed (Jesus is the only perfect person), they give us good stories and reminders of what kind of sisters we want to be.
Miriam was Moses’s sister. You can read about her in Exodus 2. When he, as a tiny baby, was put in a basket and sailed down the river to Pharaoh’s house, it was Miriam who followed the basket full of brother and then spoke up to Pharaoh’s daughter when she was looking for someone to nurse the baby. Miriam’s words made a way for her and her mom to take care of Moses while he was still an infant.
As Moses grew up, Miriam was constantly by his side as a support. My favorite story is in Exodus 15 when Moses led the Israelites in a song and then Miriam picked up and led the women in a chorus. Living in Nashville, I get lots of opportunities to hear people sing songs they wrote, and nothing makes a songwriter feel more supported than when others join in and sing along. I think that must have been really encouraging for Moses—there he was, leading the people in life and in song, and his sister joins in and leads the women to follow Moses and God as well.
That’s who we are to be as sisters. Our words should support our siblings in their dreams and their plans.
(Also, I think it is worth noting that in Numbers 12, Miriam gossips and speaks against Moses and gets in A LOT of trouble with God. Check it out.)
When Lazarus died, his sister Martha saw Jesus first and then went to get his other sister, Mary, to bring her to Jesus as well. While they were both hurting, they were honest when they talked to Jesus about Lazarus. Another interesting thing to note is that they were honest in front of each other. Nothing will bring down walls of pride between sisters like grief. And Jesus.
How weird is this—both sisters said the same thing to Jesus right when they saw Him.
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Don’t you think that is interesting? They both are expressing their grief about their brother’s death while also saying to Jesus that they know He is God. They are honest, and that’s how we should speak about our siblings and to our siblings.
In this same situation, when Lazarus has died, remember Martha runs back to the house and gets Mary. To get the fullness of this story, let’s pick up mid-convo between Martha and Jesus, before Martha heads back to the house to retrieve Mary.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
And after she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
“The Teacher is asking for you,” she said. A mean sister would have never told the little sister that Jesus was looking for her. But Martha used her words to point her sister toward Him, didn’t she? We’ve seen Mary and Martha not get along before (like in Luke 10:38–42), so it’s not that they are perfect sibling examples. But in the big moments, they remember what we should remember: your siblings may make you crazy, but they are your people. While you and I may not have the chance on this earth to physically escort someone to Jesus, we can do it with our words and our lives. You have the chance to speak in such a way that your siblings step toward Jesus.
When I was in middle school, my mom made me write this next verse one hundred times. Seriously. ONE HUNDRED. I remember sitting at my little white wooden desk and furiously writing it.
If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, who he has not seen.
Yes, I know in this version says “brother.” Trust me, I argued that exact point with my mother all those years ago. “MOM, I DO NOT HAVE A BROTHER, SO HOW CAN I HATE SOMEONE I DON’T HAVE?!?” Yeah, like I said, I was a real pleasure. (This is one of the times when I actually do remember getting mad enough to yell at my parents.)
We are called to be loving. You might say, “Yeah, I totally love my little brother” or “Of course I love my older sister.” But if I was to ask THEM, would I get the same answer? Would they say your words reflect your heart?
Or, here’s something that gives a yucky feeling but something I realized used to be true of me (and sometimes still is); do your words reveal slimy ugly ick in your heart?
I know. I hate that too.
Our truest selves are revealed when we are with our families. But here’s the beautiful thing about that—it doesn’t take much for Jesus to change your family through you. Have you been awful in the past? You can apologize, in person or in a letter, or just make a change. Ask God to forgive you for using your words as weapons and ask Him to teach you how to speak love to the people in your family. As much as that verse made me crazy when I had to write it one hundred times, it is still true. How can we claim to love God if we don’t love our family?
It’s not easy. I’m still not always good at it. But I know this—I want my family to love Jesus more because of my life, not in spite of me. And I want my words to help with that desire, not hurt it.
You can too, friend. You can use your words to bring life to your home. I know you can. Just try tomorrow. Say the kind thing when the ugly comes to the surface, hold your tongue when you could yell, bless when you could curse. No, it’s not some magic spell that is going to change everything in your home forever, but I bet your tomorrow will be different.
Try it.
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you.
—Deuteronomy 5:16
• Luke 6:45
• Deuteronomy 5:16
• Exodus 2
• Exodus 15
• John 11
• Use your concordance or BibleGateway.com to search these terms:
» parent, parents, father, mother
» brother, sister
» family
• Write the memory verse in your journal.2 Writing always helps me to actually memorize the Scripture quicker.
• Which family member do you find it most difficult to love with your words?
• Which member of your family sets a great example for you in how to use your words?
• Why is it hard to speak love at home?
• Write out a prayer, asking God to forgive you for how you have wrongly used your words toward your family in the past. Then ask Him to lead you in the future.
• Simply tell your family how much you love them. Send a note, write on each of their Facebook walls, or compliment your dad’s tie, your mom’s cooking, or your sister’s cheerleading moves.
• Take the One Day Challenge—can you make tomorrow a day when you only speak love to your family? Just try it!
1. And no, my parents didn’t tell me that I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes or anything crazy like that—this was definitely all in my head. Though I am sure there are parents out there who inflict this type of pain on their kids (telling them that mistakes are not allowed), that was not my situation.
2. Just maybe not one hundred times …