Nails In The Fence
There was a boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence.
The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally, the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it, and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
The days passed, and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one." You can put a knife in a man and draw it out; it won't matter how many times you say, "I'm sorry," the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one. [author unknown]
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” In our childhood we all heard others chide this rhyme and most of us probably said it more than a few times ourselves, perhaps even through tearful eyes. Children can be cruel to each other and sometime continue to be so when they have reached adulthood. However, by the time one reaches the age of reason he realizes that the old rhyme veils an insidious falsehood. Words do hurt. In fact, they very often do more and longer lasting damage than the blows of sticks and stones.
In another city and state I counseled with a woman for months. She was also seeing a professional therapist because she had made repeated attempts to take her life and still longed to do so. Her life had been set into a downward spiral by the cruel teasing of a couple of older teenage boys while she was in puberty. She could set for hours repeating every cruel word they had said to her 20 years before. In an attempt to prove her tormentors wrong, she participated in sinful activity for which she could not forgive herself. Over and over she relived the agony caused by foolish, uncaring peers who teased her out of their boredom. They had long since forgotten her and the words they used to destroy her self-image to the point it never recovered.
Sad as it may be, this true story is not as unusual as we might like to think. When angry or when hurt, many feel justified in lashing out verbally to avenge the wrong they feel was done to them. By and by their anger subsides and they forget all about the hurtful things they said in anger. They expect their victim to understand they were just angry and let their words quickly disregard their hurtful words. Sometimes it happens that way, but more often the verbally wounded person bleeds in silence and bandages the festering wounds long after the words are forgotten by the one who hurled them in anger. I’ve seen marriages of many years destroyed by the hurt and resentment of words spoken in anger.
Love teaches us not to take offense at words spoken in anger, but it also teaches us to never knowingly hurt another. Solomon’s words were wise then and they remain wise until now, " A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but perversion in it crushes the spirit. " ( Prov. 15:4 )
