Conclusion
I’m not good at good-byes.
The night before I moved back to Nashville from Edinburgh, Scotland, the Droop family had a birthday party for their son, my good friend Harry. It was perfect—a party with all my Scottish friends but not a going-away party for me.
I don’t like them. (I don’t mean the Droops—I LOVE them. I don’t like going-away parties for me.) When I’m the focus of such parties, it makes me too sad. I end up being a teary mess the whole time, knowing that all these people I love are at the same party because I am leaving them. Yeah, no thanks.
But at the Droops’ home that night in November, it was all about Harry. And being that his personality is almost as ridiculous as my own, he loved it. There was great food, stories, and laughter like you wouldn’t believe. The fire was blazing in the fireplace, as winters in Edinburgh can be so cold the chill gets in your bones.
In my memory, it is one of my favorite nights in Scotland. And in the blink of an eye, the meal was over, tea had been served, and it was time to leave.
I couldn’t do it.
I looked around the room at these faces, many that I love so deeply, and realized that I was about to be an ocean away from them. While I was happy to be going home to see the people who had been an ocean away for months, I was sad to leave this new home as well.
I’m feeling that with you too. I’m not ready to say good-bye except for the fact that for you to be who God means for you to be, we have to finish.
As I’m typing, the tears are streaming and I don’t want to say good-bye. I want us to sit here, and drink our tea, and pretend like we never have to leave this place.
But more than I want that, I want you to change the world, so I’m willing to say good-bye.
This week, my small group girls and I took a break from our regular Bible study and ate soup and put together a one thousand piece puzzle. I love puzzles, until you get to a huge section of water or sky or sand where EVERY SINGLE PIECE looks exactly the same and you have no idea how they are all going to fit together.
But with a few brains on it, we finished that puzzle. It took us four hours, but we did it.
That’s what this book is, I think. A bunch of puzzle pieces that, when put together, make for a beautiful picture of a lovely girl—you—who is choosing to use her words well.
There are things we didn’t discuss, to be sure. We didn’t really talk about the trouble with cussing and why you shouldn’t do it (but there is a whole day on it in the Speak Love Revolution), and we didn’t spend any time on other wrong ways that you use your words—like racist jokes or screaming at a sibling or crude humor.
Think back with me to the beginning of the book. I told you this wasn’t a defensive book, but an offensive one. Like a battle plan, I hope Speak Love travels with you and is a piece of your weaponry. I’m not here to tell you all the things you shouldn’t do. I hope, instead, that you feel you are equipped for all the ways to use your words to speak love.
But if we are focused on that—if our goal, day in and day out, is to speak love with our words—those things will fall away as well. The cussing will stop because it doesn’t fit into who you want to be. The sarcasm will slow because you can’t imagine hurting someone else with your words, even if it is unintentional. The inappropriate jokes may still come into your mind but never out of your mouth.
You’re just a different girl than you used to be.
I am too.
We have all these puzzle pieces to work with, and I hope you are starting to see the picture forming. We focus on the best things to do, the lesser things fall away. We believe the labels that are true and trash the ones that aren’t. We are intentional about the words we say to ourselves, to each other, and to God. We practice listening as well—to those we love, those we don’t know, and our Father who is always speaking through the Holy Spirit and the Bible.
Also? We say thank you. I hope you say thank you a lot. Every day. Those two simple words can make the greatest impact in building up and affirming others with our words.
All the puzzle pieces. So many of them. Coming together in just the right pattern at just the right moment to make you who God always wanted you to be and who you, maybe unconsciously, have always wanted to be.
I hope today that you will write a note. To anyone. To people who need some words of life poured over their hearts. I hope that you will stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. And I hope you will think before you speak, choosing words that are gifts of light, not ones that cause death.
I can see you today, in my mind’s eye.
I see this book in your hands with only a few pages left to flip through. And I just have to wonder what else you could need from me. A hug? A hot mug of chai? A charge to go out and do the thing?
That last one, I can do. So here it is.
My friend,
I send you out of this book and into a new season of life. I commission you to go and speak love, to change the world with your words. I challenge you to never be the same person you were when you started this book. I pray you know God better, love yourself more, and see other people more clearly. I believe that you have more power of influence than you will ever know, and I encourage you to be a light that influences for Jesus.
I want to remind you of this:
Proverbs 18:21
The tongue has the power of life and death.
Yes, yes it does.
You’ve seen that by now, haven’t you? You’ve seen the difference,
in the stories and in Scripture and in your own life.
I send you out, my sweet friend, to speak love.
May the world never be the same because of you.
