how to tell

Five-Minute-Friday: a chance to sit down and pen unfiltered, unedited with community about one word. Share your story, won't you?

I have been hanging out with these wonderful writers for a while, and it has been one of the most encouraging experiences of my life. So please, come sit with us awhile?

Just link up with Kate Motaung here and encourage the writer who posts before you--that is the best part!

Today's word: TELL

Sometimes I don't know how. 

How to let the words spill unfiltered--how to release the fear that dams my thoughts, my feelings, my self. I sat in a cold room and tried to express how much I love teaching, and the words came out all wrong.

I sit here wishing I could express my frustration with people I cherish. Speak my affection for people I love. 

But sometimes words just don't work quite right. This word is too long, too many hard sounds--that one is too short, not enough vowels. The emotions wear the words like an ill-fitting dress that bags where it shouldn't and squeezes everywhere else. 

Maybe we can't always tell our hearts with words. Maybe we were given eyes and hands and tears and laughter by the One who weeps and laughs with us because they can speak where the words don't fit. Perhaps there are pauses and spaces in conversation on purpose, to make room for all that words cannot do. 

I adore words, but I cannot help but admit their humility. Is not silence more eloquent for the contrast of wonderful words? We were given both. We need both. 

There are so many ways to tell people about the Love that casts out fear. Let Him show us. 

"When God will not use thee in one kind, yet He will in another. A soul that desires to serve and honour Him shall never want opportunity to do it; nor must thou so limit the Holy One of Israel as to think He hath but one way in which He can glorify Himself by thee. He can do it by thy silence as well as by thy preaching; thy laying aside as well as thy continuance in thy work." Mr. Oldfield's Soliloquy, North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell