The L Word

My son Matt is a brilliant young man. I know that some of you will say that I have a skewed opinion because I'm his mother, but he really is brilliant. He is 27 years old and will receive his Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy next May. He completed his undergraduate degree in 3 1/2 years, and the university allowed him to begin taking classes toward his Ph.D. during his last semester of graduate school. His grade point average has been a solid 4.0 throughout both his graduate and post-graduate education. He really is a brilliant young man.

Matt has always been smart, but I didn't realize when he was young just how smart he really was. He always had a fascination with words (I can't imagine who might have encouraged that trait in him), and from time to time, he would get focused on a certain word and use that word every time he had the opportunity. Sometimes the way he would use the words would be hilarious, like when he got hung up on the word "linkage." He would attach the word to other words in quite comical ways that often made no sense to anyone else, but he loved the way the word sounded in conjunction with another. Let's have some cake-linkage for dinner, Mom. I'm going for a linkage-walk. I need a hair-linkage-cut. I don't feel very linkage-good. I know ... he's brilliant, but a little crazy, too.

When I think about Matt's youthful word infatuation, I can't help but think about the power of words ... words can hurt or heal or torment or praise or judge or make us laugh or cry or change the direction of our lives. Words can linger in our minds or hearts forever, and once a word is spoken, it can never be recalled. Words can make us feel loved, or they can make us feel that we are completely alone in life. Words are more powerful than many of us realize, and I know that I should think and pray so much more about what I say before I speak.

When I went with my friend to the inner city church that I wrote about in the post Forgiven Much, we were asked as we entered the church to choose from three different brightly colored stickers and to place one on our shirts. In his sermon, the pastor talked about the various labels that we place on one another, and about the pain or joy those labels can bring into our lives. He spoke about labels of love and labels of hate, about labels of success and labels of failure, about labels of truth and labels of lies. And as he spoke, my eyes filled with tears as I gazed at those around me who nodded in agreement or spoke words of affirmation as the minister's words struck chords within their hearts. You see, those people ... those people know what it means to be labeled. Those people know what it means to bear L words ... to walk through every moment of their lives with a label pinned to their clothing, to be judged, to be criticized, to be scorned.

Words ... L words ... I'm so thankful that when God looks at me, He sees me with only one label ... covered ... covered in the blood of Jesus Christ.