CHAPTER 6
Your People
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
—Proverbs 16:24
You know, I’ve told you—I love my people. It is a unique love that you have with your family—a love that you never chose but get to feel and experience anyway. Your friends? You get to pick them. I think that is why now, as an adult, I love my friends’ kids so much. They are these tiny versions of the people I picked to have in my life already!
So how we speak to them, all the people, matters. Your words matter.
I hope you’re getting the idea that I’m putting across here—there is not a person in your world who is not affected by how you use your words. Your mom. Your best friend. Your best friend’s mom.
I’m simply taking a minute to offer you an important reminder: You have power. Do you realize that sound waves, once they start, NEVER stop? That’s science a friend shared with me and research has proved true. Your words? The ripple effects from those sounds continue on and on and on.
I love glitter. I like to say that it is my favorite color. Glitter. Confetti. Sequins. I love it all. I saw Katy Perry’s movie Part of Me and I learned a lot from it (something we can talk about at another time) but my biggest takeaway?
I want a confetti cannon.
She has this tubular contraption she uses during her show to shoot confetti out into the crowd. It’s like a T-shirt gun except it is full of tiny pieces of paper that cause a party anywhere they land.
I want one in my life. I want to have it with me every day. Can you imagine walking into a meeting and being like, “Sorry I’m five minutes late …” BOOM! You pull the trigger and fill the room with confetti. Or at the end of worship team practice at church, you say, “Great job, guys!” BOOM! A party breaks out because you have exploded joy across the room.
Without being too cheesy, I have to be honest and say that you get the chance to speak life like that—explode it onto the people who are in your life. The world is going to work hard to give you opportunities to kill relationships with words, because that is what Satan does—he kills, steals, and destroys (see John 10:10).
Words can do that, can’t they? Man, I had one friendship with another girl that broke beyond repair simply because of words that were said. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Words kill.
But the beautiful side? Words give life. And how you talk to the people in your life can build them up or tear them down. While both are going to happen (yes, you have permission to be human and mess up sometimes), your goal, my goal, is to work hard to love well with our words.
So while we’ve already covered our families (not in confetti—just meaning we’ve already discussed them), let’s talk about the other people who live in our every day.
The Boss of You
What other adults are important in your life besides your parents? Maybe …
• grandparents
• teachers
• coaches
• youth leader
• small group leader
• Girl Scouts leader
• mentor
• me …
Okay, not really “me,” besides in my writing or if you come hear me speak, unless you are one of the twelve college girls in my small group. But there are lots of other adults in your life who are invested in you and care about you. Whether you know it or believe it, it is true.
I used to coach high school soccer, and I remember thinking often of what a huge responsibility that was—not just to make sure the girls were in top running condition or knew how to handle a corner kick. Coaches get to invest in the lives of their players. About a week ago, one of my players emailed me a picture of a card I wrote in and sent to her probably nine years ago, and all her email said was, “I still think about you and am grateful for you.” As a former coach, it meant so much that she even remembers my name. I spoke words of life to her all those years ago, but you know what? Last week, she spoke words of life to me as well.
You cannot overestimate how much your words will affect the adults in your life. You think it is no big deal to email an old soccer coach and say that? It absolutely marked my heart. You think your youth leader at church doesn’t need to hear the story of how his talk last Sunday really changed how you view missions? I bet he does.
Last April, before my small group went home from college for the summer, we had a spend-the-night party. We call these get-togethers a “Small Group Snoozle.” On the last class day of the semester, the crew of gals crashes at my place and we eat unhealthy-ish food and paint our nails and watch movies and pretty much just have a really great time until I head to my bedroom and let them sort out which part of the floor they will claim for the night.
When they all arrived at this party, I had them write their home address on five envelopes a piece and then we put those envelopes in a bowl and mixed them all up. The bowl was passed around the room and each girl then drew out five different envelopes with five different addresses on them. Their assignment for the summer (yes, I give summer assignments) was to write notes to five girls in our group.
Each girl would write five notes over the summer and each girl would receive five notes over the summer.
Do you know what that meant?
That meant that I got to write and sent five notes BUT I also got to receive five encouraging notes in the mail. As each of them arrived, I was absolutely thrilled. The girls took time to write the kindest things about what Tuesday nights had grown to mean to them and how God had done work in their hearts through our group.
On the days when I’m tired or frustrated with being a leader, I can look at those notes and remember why I do what I do.
I love the stories in the Bible where students honor their teachers. There is a simple and beautiful story in 1 Samuel 3 about the little boy, Samuel, and his boss, Eli the priest. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, had given Samuel to the house of the Lord to be raised as a priest. You can read all about that in 1 Samuel 1–2. In chapter 3, Samuel is in his room going to bed and Eli is in his room, and Samuel hears a voice calling to him.
1 Samuel 3:1–9 (The Message)
The boy Samuel was serving God under Eli’s direction. This was at a time when the revelation of God was rarely heard or seen. One night Eli was sound asleep (his eyesight was very bad—he could hardly see). It was well before dawn; the sanctuary lamp was still burning. Samuel was still in bed in the Temple of God, where the Chest of God rested.
Then God called out, “Samuel, Samuel!”
Samuel answered, “Yes? I’m here.” Then he ran to Eli saying, “I heard you call. Here I am.”
Eli said, “I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.” And so he did.
God called again, “Samuel, Samuel!”
Samuel got up and went to Eli, “I heard you call. Here I am.”
Again Eli said, “Son, I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.” (This all happened before Samuel knew God for himself. It was before the revelation of God had been given to him personally.)
God called again, “Samuel!”—the third time! Yet again Samuel got up and went to Eli, “Yes? I heard you call me. Here I am.”
That’s when it dawned on Eli that God was calling the boy. So Eli directed Samuel, “Go back and lie down. If the voice calls again, say, ‘Speak, God. I’m your servant, ready to listen.’” Samuel returned to his bed.
I know it is simple. But do you see that three times Samuel hopped up when he thought Eli was calling him? And Eli always answered with kindness. And what about Samuel? When I was a teenager, I wasn’t so polite when my mom woke me up for school—I can’t imagine thinking I heard her three times in the middle of the night, waking up and going to check only to find her still sleeping. I would have been annoyed. Samuel was fine with it.
As you continue to read in chapter 3, check out verse 19.
1 Samuel 3:19
The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground.
Samuel honored his authority figures, and in turn God honored him. And later Samuel became the authority figure for King David. How David responded to Samuel left a mark forever in the history of Israel and the world. (Read 1 Samuel 16.)
Remember that we are always speaking life or death (see Proverbs 18:21) and you get the chance to speak life to the adults in your world. Here are some examples (though I’m sure you can think of tons of other ways to use your words well for them):
• Write an encouraging post on their Facebook wall.
• Send a letter in the mail.
• As you leave class, just thank your teacher. “Thanks for today, I enjoyed class.” That’s it. No biggie.
My favorite teacher was my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Albers. I can’t tell you all the reasons why; I guess I don’t remember. I just knew she was the best. She was fun, loved being around us, and made me feel like school was going to be awesome every day. In fact, I think that year was when I decided that I wanted to teach school when I was an adult.
When I was in college, I found Mrs. Albers’s email address on the elementary school website and emailed her. I happily told her with my adult words all the ways she had nurtured my child heart. She wrote back, equally as happy to hear from me.
You don’t have to wait years to tell an important adult in your life how much they’ve meant to you. One of my best friends is Kathleen. She’s a good fifteen years older than me—in fact, all through middle and high school, she led my small group. So she put up with a pretty difficult version of Annie. Now as an adult, I love talking with her. No, I don’t tell her every time we talk how much she means to me, but I’ve said it. And I’ll say it again. (And I’m writing about her here—HI, KATHLEEN!!) But I speak love to her just in our friendship, in the things we talk about and in how we share life. Also, she makes these killer desserts that are banana and peanut butter and white chocolate quesadillas, and desserts with white chocolate are pretty much my love language. So that’s the other reason I keep her around. (Just kidding, Kathleen.)
It’s not hard to love the adults who have invested in you. You feel it in their friendship—that they care, that they aren’t quitting you, that they are proud of you. But it is sometimes hard to express that appreciation. But go for it—I promise, you will confetti cannon joy into their whole day.
Also, let me note before we move on, there is a lot of hard in being a leader and a lot of heart in being a mentor. You just can never know all that the adults in your life are dealing with. Plato is believed to have once said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” So please just let me remind you—while your leaders (and parents) may look strong, they are battling. Everyone is. And kind words go a long way.
Friends: an Open Ear, a Closed Mouth
I can’t quit thinking about the book of James. When it comes to how I speak to and about my friends, these verses seem to be the ones that stand out to me the most.
James 3:3–12 (The Message)
A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!
It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.
This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
You aren’t new at being a girl. And I’m surely not the first to tell you how to use your words when you are talking with your friends. But I think this portion of Scripture is so valuable when we think about our friendships—how we talk to and about our friends.
I don’t think anyone, not even my family, can cause me to be as two-faced (two-mouthed?) as my friends have historically. I spent so much time in middle school and high school praying intensely for my friends to become believers while also cussing occasionally and gossiping and not always telling the truth.
Brackish. Fresh water. Brackish. Brackish. Brackish.
Can I just say this to you? Stay away from gossip. Just do.
Here’s the problem with gossip that somehow, even though I am a full-on adult, I still forget sometimes. Gossip has this way of deceiving us into believing that we have better and more trustworthy friends, when in reality it is showing you which of your friends cannot be trusted. If they are talking with YOU about HER, they are talking with HER about YOU, just like you are probably talking with HER about THEM.
The ugly truth is that the friends who gossip, who are the center of the know-a-lot-and-tell-a-lot world, are the ones who get left out when things get hard. When the deep things are going on inside your soul, the gossips aren’t the one’s you’re going to talk to. They hear only the surface stories because you know that they will tell.
I’ve been her. The girl on the inside who always was in the know, and you know what? I actually didn’t like it. Sure, in the moment when someone wanted something juicy and I had it to give, rad. But when it came to the important stuff, I knew nothing. And I knew I knew nothing.
So I changed. And now I am the one who knows which friends don’t get my stories and which friends can be trusted.
Be the one who can be trusted. Be the one who has an open ear, encouraging words, and a closed mouth.
On the other hand, when’s the last time you took an extra minute to tell your girlfriends how great they are? My friend Rachael did the coolest thing on her birthday a few years ago. When we arrived at her home for a birthday brunch, there were cards by the door, one with each of our names on it—probably thirty envelopes total. In it, Rachael, on HER birthday, had written us each a note saying why she was grateful for us. I was so blessed by it that I adopted the idea myself. I love the opportunity to thank my friends for their love and kindness. Think of Proverbs 16:24:
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
(Also, let’s memorize that one. It’s a good verse to have pop into your mind.)
If you want a list of what it looks like to use your words well with your friends, here we go:
1. Don’t gossip.
2. Go out of your way to be kind.
3. Fight fair. Think before you speak.
4. Don’t drop bombs in arguments that will prevent y’all from ever recovering. (You know the ones I mean—those comments you know are danger as soon as they come to your mind. Let it go. Don’t say the thing you will regret.)
5. In every circumstance, be on your friends’ team.
6. If someone else is talking bad about your friend, say something nice. If she is down on herself, say something true and kind. Something our small group used to say to each other all the time was, “I am FOR you.” In every situation, even on the bad days, I am FOR my friends.
7. Don’t gossip!
The best thing for us to do is remember how it feels when awful words are used toward us. I have long said that I would rather learn to control my tongue by being on the receiving end of horrible words than on the giving end (though I have been there too). I have been in some pretty gnarly friend-fights in my life—two come to mind—where I know that the other person regrets the things she said and I was hurt badly. I don’t ever want to do that to anyone else. Jesus would never do that to me.
Boys
Ah. The fellas.
I’ll tell ya, I don’t always know how to talk to boys. They are an interesting species that I wish I understood better. Truly. They think so differently than we do, they hear sentences differently than we say them, and they communicate in different ways than girls.
The truth? They are way simpler than we are, I think. Not stupid—don’t hear me wrong. But when I ponder for twenty minutes about what a text message means when the boy says, “How’s your day?” he is probably just asking how my day is going, not wondering any of the other twelve questions I think he means.
Right? Right.
There are a lot of male options in your life. (And just to note, we are only talking about boys around your own age. There is never a time when an authority figure—a teacher, a coach, a leader—should be in one of these categories where you are trying to figure out what your emotions mean. If a grown man in your life is flirting or saying things that make you feel like he is interested in you in THAT way, you need to tell another adult, not figure out how to handle it yourself. Please? Okay? Thanks.)
So here are the categories of dudes that come to my mind:
• He’s in your family.
• He’s a friend, and that is it. You definitely don’t and won’t like him. No way.
• He’s a friend, but he’s in another relationship, so whether or not you would like him doesn’t matter.
• He’s a friend, but you could maybe like him.
• He’s a friend, but you totally like him.
• You like him, but he doesn’t know you exist.
• You like him, but you don’t think he likes you.
• You like him, and he likes you.
• He’s new to your world—you don’t yet know what category he’s going to fit into.
Phew. Maybe you can think of other categories, but I’ve gone through the address book on my phone and every single, age-appropriate unmarried guy fits into one of these categories. And to be honest, it really opened my eyes to a few situations I may not be paying enough attention to. 
So what I am saying is that boys are somewhat uncomplicated, girls are complicated, and our categories are complicated.
Nonetheless, we are lucky to have our guy friends and men in the world. It’s okay to have guy friends—in fact, I think it is great! Jesus had friends who were girls and didn’t cross boundaries, so we can do the same. Do I think a guy needs to be your number-one total bestie in the world? Nope. But I think it is healthy to have friends who are guys and friends who are girls. While both men and women are created in the image of God, we are able to see things about God in guys that we can learn from and appreciate.
And how we speak to them should reflect that truth. They are made in the image of God just like us, and just like us, words can build them up or tear them down.
Here come some basic dude dos and don’ts when it comes to how you use your words. Of course, there are more thoughts about all of this, and that’s why it is important to have your parents or other godly adults in your life to help guide you. These are just guidelines, not rules. Let the people who know and love you help you do this well.
Think before you speak.
This is true in, well, every relationship. But I find with guys that if I will think before I speak, I get myself in WAY less trouble. Just last week I made a joke to a guy about him being single on Valentine’s Day, forgetting that he’s not exactly over the breakup that he went through in the fall. Had I thought first, I would have never said it. It didn’t build him up. It hurt his feelings and I had to apologize. Think first, girls, and you will save yourself a lot of apologies or embarrassing moments.
Don’t call him a girl / princess / feminine descriptor.
He’s not. He’s a boy. Our job as girls who are choosing to speak love is to encourage strength in people and respect them. Remember, it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4), not His anger or criticism that makes us want to change our behavior. No guy is going to act more manly because you call him a “wimp” or a “girl” or “girly.” Stop being mean. It’s not godly and, honestly, it isn’t going to grow your friendship with that guy at all. Encourage his strengths.
Pray for him.
For sure. Pray for guys just like you pray for your girlfriends and leaders and other humans. But do so with this tiny caution: praying for people does something inside your heart—it connects you to them and makes you think about them more. That’s not always a bad thing, but there have been times when I wanted to pray for a guy I cared about, but knew I needed to guard my heart because I didn’t want to be thinking about him all day every day. Speaking of …
Guard your heart. And your stories.
Not everyone deserves to hear your hopes and dreams. Don’t give them away. Just because he is your good friend doesn’t mean he needs to hear what you want your life at thirty to be like. I always thought that when the Bible says to guard your heart (see Proverbs 4:23), it was more about keeping your mind pure sexually or not daydreaming about a wedding. But it is also about guarding the things that are IN your heart—your hopes, your dreams, your plans, and your worries. Guard them. Your girlfriends are good for sharing those things, and the man you are going to marry will be good when the time comes, also your parents or other godly leaders will be great ears. But sometimes, we should be like Mary in Luke 2:19 and just treasure up some things and keep them to ourselves, in our heart.
Use your words.
It’s okay to tell a guy you think he is great or to celebrate him when he hits a homerun. While boundaries are a good thing (see Psalm 16:6), being open and honest and loving are good too. The more you practice using your words to speak life, the better you will understand where that boundary is for you in every relationship. I have lots of different guys in my life—college baseball players who are like little brothers, single guys I could maybe date someday, guys who are married to my friends—and every relationship has a different boundary on how I use my words. But I use them. And I learn. And I make mistakes. And I try again.
I always say I would rather go down encouraging someone than having a heart full of words I never said. So I tell you that and ask that you will take that sentence and mix it in a bowl full of think before you speak and guard your heart with a heavy scoop of wisdom and bake it in the oven. When it comes out, use those words to honor, support, and lift up the guys in your life.
Guys battle in ways we’ll never understand, similar to how we battle in ways they can’t know. But there is a beautiful place where we both respect each other’s battles and speak life into the wounded places.
Be the girl who speaks life. Not the one who wounds.
All the folks we’ve talked about in this chapter are just people—humans doing the best they can to do this life well and handle the highs and lows. What a beautiful gift it is to use our words to make them stronger, braver, kinder, and lovelier.
We touched on how to be kind to friends, but I know there is a deeper conversation here—about how friends can be awful, and what it feels like to get picked on, and how to stand up for yourself and your friends. Wait for it. The entire next chapter is on her. Her? Yeah, her. The mean girl.
Your Words Matter
Memorize the Word
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
—Proverbs 16:24
Read the Word
• John 10:10
• 1 Samuel 1–3
• 1 Samuel 16
• Proverbs 18:21
• Romans 2:42
• Proverbs 4:23
• Psalm 16:6
Journal Your Words
• Write Proverbs 4:23 in your journal and list out some ways that you need God’s wisdom when it comes to being open and generous with your words while also guarding your heart.
• List out EVERY person besides family who matters to you. Write them in your journal, and whether it is two people or twenty, write one positive word about each of them and thank God for them. Use this list as a reminder of who to pray for.
Use Your Words
• Use them!
• Send a note to a leader in your life who has really touched your heart.
• Get a stack of sticky notes and cover your best friend’s room with encouraging words and verses.
• Be your friends’ biggest cheerleader! Whether for girls or boys, use your words in such a way that you are known as the girl who is ALWAYS on their side.