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Mouth Wars

One of the most difficult things I’ve learned to do in marriage is tame my tongue. While I don’t quite have that figured out, I’ve been stretched tremendously since April 29th, 2021. Marriage reveals a lot about who we really are and can I tell you, Vashti LOVES to say what’s on her mind. Interestingly, I lean more towards the introverted side. I am mostly quiet unless I need to be social. Despite my “chill” and “laid-back” personality, I do have a hard time taming my tongue, especially in heated conversations. It gets cutthroat pretty quickly with a mouth war that leaves both parties defeated, wounded, and broken.


I mentioned this many blogs ago about Jarrod and I’s premarital counseling and the session we did on conflict resolution. If you missed those blogs, here’s an inside on how we tend to approach resolving conflict. Jarrod is the immediate resolver. I tend to linger, dwell and simmer on the situation. I don’t like to resolve instantly. In premarital counseling, we were advised to meet in the middle. I needed to communicate that I needed time and Jarrod and I both had to agree on a reasonable middle ground time that gives me enough time to blow off steam but also does not drag the conflict out longer than it needs to be. Learning and receiving tools and tips for marriage is easy. Implementing what’s learned when conflict arises is difficult.


In our almost one year of marriage Jarrod and I have had 3 “major” arguments. We do banter from time to time, but these 3 “major” arguments required us to implement what we learned. In last week’s blog, I shared that the root of these arguments stemmed from my disconnect with Christ. You see, often we expose what’s in our hearts when life gets heated. My lack of daily devotion to Christ revealed what was in my heart when Jarrod and I didn’t meet eye to eye.

Looking back, both of us agree that our “major” arguments could have been avoided and downright petty on both of our parts. Funny how in the moment all we want is to be right failing to see we are the same team and should be working together rather than against each other. Our arguments ended up being mouth wars that wounded the heart of the other and stirred insecurities as hurtful words often do.


There are plenty of verses in the Bible that touches on the importance of taming our tongues. King Solomon writes in Proverbs 21:23 that “Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.” The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4:29, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” James wrote in James 3:10, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” Lastly, Matthew writes in Matthew 12:36, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak…” Again these are just a few I handpicked for this specific blog. If you’re curious about what more the Bible has to say about taming the tongue I challenge you to google it. It won’t take too long for you to be convicted.


While James was very clear that we cannot tame our tongues (James 3:8), he did encourage followers of Christ to seek purity of speech. In seeking purity of speech we seek the One who is pure and righteous. It boils down to the whole concept of you produce what you are plugged into or you are what you eat. If you consume good and practice good, you are more likely to release good whenever you’re faced with trying times. While I have not mastered this, Jarrod and I do try out best to seek purity of speech when mouth wars desires greatly to take over. We will never master this, but that does not stop us from trying to practice speaking from a pure heart.

Reality is, communicating can be difficult. Choosing our words especially when we’re heated is often strenuous. It’s easy to simply say what’s on our mind, bring up the past or throw dart words that wound and crush the heart. That’s easy. What’s difficult is choosing righteousness and holy speech. In choose this route however, you save you and your spouse/significant other the time it takes to apologize for your degrading and negative choice words. You also avoid an even bigger argument as choice words often stirs the pot and increases the heat of conflict.


You will only respond in purity if what you consume is pure. I have learned and is continuing to learn that my response is directly related to what I have been consuming on a daily basis. Whenever I snap, it is probably due to my lack of responsibility submitting my temperate to Christ. I need to daily surrender the parts of my heart I know easily stirs strife. You know what you struggle with. You know what areas in your heart that needs daily surrendering. Let me tell you, we can avoid plenty petty mouth wars if we learn to daily surrender the dirty parts of us that enjoys being right and having things our way. It is important to understand though, that while you may still not meet eye to eye, you are still on each others team. You are still rooting for the other. You are still one!


In wrapping up this weeks blog I want to encourage you. If you struggle with your speech, here are a couple things to remember when conflict stirs in your relationships or marriage:

  1. You are working together not against each other.
  2. Fight the urge to bring up the past – speak on what “fits the occasion.”
  3. Give each other grace and time to communicate.
  4. Practice praying about your response rather than stewing in your rightness.
  5. Fight the urge to use words that degrade, demean and that which can break the confidence of your spouse.
  6. Hug and kiss it out! (if you’re married)
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Ephesians 4:29 

Categories
Relationship

Don’t talk to me.

Continuing on the theme of relationships, let’s talk “Communication.” I can go on forever on this, but in order to not transform this blog into a book I’ll get right to the point. Communication is key in any relationship, but more so in dating/marriage relationship. As important as it is, communication may not be important to everyone and by that I mean, it was not important to me. Odd being I enjoy communicating through words.

The first year of dating, Jarrod and I had a hard time because I found it extremely difficult to communicate. A lot of that stems from my upbringing. We are the way we are based on how we were raised and the example that was before us. Don’t get me wrong, my parents did an awesome job, but no one is perfect. No marriage is perfect. That is why it is so very important that if there are things you saw growing up that were not done well, when you start a family your job is to break history’s cycle. Don’t continue bad family traits. The excuse of “that’s the way we do things” is not only selfish, but a weak excuse that stuns character development and growth.


Jarrod is the type of person that wants to immediately address the problem. I on the other hand, would much rather wait things out or forget about it entirely. It goes as far as I’d tell Jarrod, “don’t talk to me” as means to avoid the conflict entirely. Sometimes it got even wild as I’d avoid him entirely so as to not have to address the problem at hand. Jarrod always teases that for someone with such small stature, I can be a fireball. Trust, me I am not proud of that side of me. Confrontation is not my cup of tea. Not in the slightest. I just hate addressing issues. I’d much rather sulk in my hurt than address the issue and move on. With our difference in personalities in how we address problems, we bucked heads quite a bit. Naturally so. It can be the simplest most basic miscommunication, I’d much rather avoid rather than talk out what would take less than five minutes to resolve. With our unique approach in how we address miscommunication and problems, we had to work through a number of issues early on. All because one party wanted to deal with things in the moment and other didn’t.

Want to know a secret? Well, it really is no secret since we’ve told those who asked advice on communication. Here it is, we went to counseling. We finally got enough of it and went to our Pastor seeking guidance. We didn’t want to call things quit because of communication. Besides communication issues, we were doing just fine. We did however, did not want to keep bad habits throughout our relationship. The inability to communicate was not grounds to walk our separate ways. After talking to our Pastor, we decided on bi-weekly counseling sessions using the Prepare Enrich couples assessment tool. This tool was primarily used in the church for marriage counseling. We didn’t want to wait until marriage to work out issues and figure out how to communicate. Pastor thought it was a brilliant idea and so counseling was in session.

Through counseling, I found out a lot about myself. We both did. We realized, we both wanted the same thing. We wanted peace and understanding. The difficulty was we showed that to each other very differently. Jarrod’s version of peace is squashing there and now in order to not deal with a grumpy [at the time] girlfriend. My version of peace is moving on and forgetting about it. Neither approach is correct. Our intents while may seem pure to one party or the other was really stemmed from selfishness. I selfishly wanted to get over it and so did Jarrod. We expressed this differently.


The goal of communication and conflict resolution is not merely “getting over things.” It is healing a wound. Whether big or small, a wound remains a wound unless addressed to heal. Left unresolved, the wound only get’s bigger until you have an infected and poisoned heart. That’s where bitterness comes from [a discussion for another day]. Healing is found in proper communication. Through counseling we were able to develop tools that we use today and probably will continue to do so through the length of our relationship. We have not and will not always get it right, but we’ve implemented these tools time and time as issues come up. Interestingly, issues became increasing less as understanding between our different communication styles were addressed and grasped by the party.

Here’s one tip I will leave with you. If you are struggling to communicate with your significant other, figure out your different communication styles and choose to meet in the middle. I cannot instantaneously process like Jarrod can. He knows how he feels and means what he says and can confront with no issue within the moment conflict arises. My personality requires time. I need to process, formulate my thoughts and understand exactly how I feel. If rushed I will say things I will eventually regret and cannot take back. The words that come out of my mouth when hurt and angry cuts deeper than actual wounds. In order to avoid being placed in that position, we had to learn to meet in the middle. Jarrod had to understand the importance of giving time, while I had to develop a habit of condensing the processing time. It wasn’t easy at first, but the more we implemented, the better we got. If an issues comes up, I give Jarrod a reasonable time that I would be ready to talk and we would decide mutually if that was too long drawn out or reasonable. Today, I can proudly say that rather than taking hours to get over things, within a couple minutes we can resolve, heal and move forward. Bigger issues can extend to an hour or so, but for the most part, we were able to resolve. Most importantly, we were able to heal whatever hurt was present rather than simply getting over things.

I will leave you with this. While I am a huge believer of counseling for those who are struggling in their relationship, if you choose not to, here are a couple things to keep in mind:

  • It’s always better to resolve the differences you have with those that hurt or offend you.
  • Understand forgiveness is for you, not them.
  • You are not always right.
  • The goal of communication is never to prove a point, rather to hear the heart of those that are hurting.
  • Conflict resolution requires give and take.
  • Never use “name calling.”
  • Never bring up the past.
  • Give each other grace
  • Most importantly, remember to love.

Are you in conflict with a loved one or friend? How can you make things right today?