The tongue no man can tame!

Oh stars. Don't you just love when Today's Life Lesson With Love From the Lord is so clear? I do.

"You have got to stop talking!" I heard those exact words from multiple people today. As harsh as they may sound (maybe they don't sound harsh--maybe you've had to listen to me a time or two haha), it was all in the name of being considerate and helpful, since my voice decided to take a vacation this morning. A weekend full of chilly air, road-trip karaoke, hayrides, campfires, and hymn sings took its toll by Lord's Day morning, and my voice had checked out. I, however, being the talker that I am, just couldn't hack the lack of communication, so I spent all day trying to squeak out as much as I could, and lots of people spent all day rebuking me for the abuse I was laying on my vocal cords. However, in their rebuke, I felt a Stiller, Smaller rebuke. You know the voice.

It's something I've been feeling a little poked about for quite a while now. I say lots of words to lots of people. Some people talk a lot, but do it quietly. Some people don't talk much, but when they do, you hear it. I happen to have the "best" of both worlds. I am a rambling queen, and I do it at a decibel level that some people equate more with yelling.

I think part of my poked-ness is a little about self-consciousness--it bothers me how loud I am. I honestly can't hear it most of the time. If someone points it out to me, I can tell, but I am usually blissfully unaware of the loudness left to my own devices. I can't count the number of times I've felt like I was just speaking normally and seen my listener grab their ears in agony. It's embarrassing actually. I always used to get really discouraged when I read the verses about having a meek and quiet spirit, because there is nothing quiet about the real me (my I-don't-know-anyone self can be pretty silent, but she doesn't get out much). I eventually realized when I was a little older that a quiet spirit is different than a quiet mouth.

But I've also been realizing that a quiet mouth has got a value of its own. In the interest of scaring people less often, I've been trying to take the noise down a notch in the actual-amount-of-noise-you-hear sense. But I feel like the Lord's been working with me a little bit to take the noise down as in the amount of ridiculous and unnecessary words that I speak. And having my voice all of a sudden vacate my premises was kind of like a little "Know that I'm not joking about this," from the Lord.

It's just that I spend so much time talking about nothing. Either I'm talking frivolous and trivial things, or I'm complaining, or I'm talking about myself, the list goes on and on. I'd be afraid to calculate what percentage of my audible speech is actually about the Lord, or how much of it is in the interest of those walls we're building up for Him. So much of my breath is wasted in talk of worldly things, in complaint, in passive boasting--I won't mince words, I am sometimes boastful and proud even if I try and hide it in the way I word things--and it makes me scared to think of being at the Seat, watching the Me slideshow with my Lord, and seeing how little of my time, my activity, my voice was really truly devoted to Him.

So having my voice gone, even for just this short amount of time (maybe it was more of a staycation--it kind of comes and goes a little bit) has just been like the Lord's showing me how ugly my mouth can be, and yet the potential it has for good. Just, when there's only so much you can get across, you don't want to waste your energy on words that don't matter. You want to spend your time conveying to people important messages.

I don't want my mouth to open up and spout a bunch of icky stuff with a little bit of His sweetness mixed in. I want Psalm 51:15--"O Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise." I don't want Him to open my lips only to hear a bunch of garbage spill out. So instead of letting me empty my cotton-candy-and-garbage filled mouth (to avoid confusion, I mean cotton candy as unsubstantial and empty, completely separate from the "sweetness" reference earlier haha), He's shutting it temporarily, I think so I can see what's going on in there, and what's going on in my heart, to produce such garbage, since we all know that out of the abundance of the heart man--or wo-man--speaketh.

So for the next day or two, my mouth will be a little less flappy than usual, and will hopefully get on a path to staying that way. No man can tame my tongue, but the Lord is no mere man. He's Almighty God, and He's up for the challenge if I let Him.