My sister in law on the other hand, has an uncanny gift of walking in a kitchen and creating a smorgasbord of a meal with what seems to me “nothing to eat” in the house! She is gifted and creative in a kitchen and even more so in the presentation of the meal. I recall warmly many times sitting down to a “Rausch” meal to countless surprises. She would torment her brother (my husband) by arranging certain things at only his place setting. She would make a second batch of a recipe just to torment him and either add or delete ingredients to aggravate him. I won’t give explicit details but there were times that it involved the stuff left in the backyard grass from their black labs, just to give an idea. Let your imagination go…. hamburgers, enchiladas, and Shish Kabob’s often had very peculiar ingredients.
What has stayed with me is her ability to combine many concoctions that in my mind were scary, but to my taste buds delightful! Things I would never had considered combining; she had no fear and would try anything. Tending to be on the safe and “vanilla” side, I jokingly would say, “She adds everything but the kitchen sink!” Her ability was and is truly an amazing gift.
Today, someone told me something in passing. It was not gossip or anything slanderous or wrong, it was just a statement of fact. As I walked away I thought to myself, “I wonder if I should inform another person of that?” It was uncanny that the above story came to mind. Recalling how my sister in law could throw together numerous ingredients in a meal, throwing together our words or conversations don’t have the same outcome. It is not always a good thing.
What I mean by that is there are times that our conversations need to stay “unseasoned” if you will. It is not necessary to keep adding ingredients by passing on information that is needless of hurtful. We repeat things at times that are useless chatter. You may disagree with me, but women are the worst offenders. We talk, talk, talk and talk some more, having to get in our 30,000 words a day. As I pondered why the thought popped into my mind to repeat something to someone, I began to think of a conversation as many ingredients. I say something to you, you pass it on to someone else, and they pass to another. Just like the game telephone, by the time it reaches the 10th person, it is so convoluted it is no makes sense. Staying in context of this story, there are so many ingredients added, it is disgusting and nobody would eat it! As a little girl I remember playing house and putting a lot of different ingredients in a bowl as I was making a meal for my prince charming. What it ended up being was a bowl full of components looking like vomit and nobody would want to eat it. My husband may tell you that there are still times when it seems that I am playing house like that in our kitchen with a meal or two that I have served him! Fortunately, for him he has stopped saying, “That’s not how my Mom made it!” Can you even imagine?
All kidding aside, I would like to encourage you to check out your words. Ask yourself; are they profitable, needful, hurtful, or just useless? Proverbs 15:28 says, “The heart of the godly thinks carefully before speaking…” Does anyone remember a recipe years ago (I can’t recall what it was) that you mixed up a batch, passed a small portion on to your friends and then they added an ingredient to it and kept it going? Our conversations are similar. There are things that have no business going on and on. This recipe was definitely one of them, but our conversations and words are likewise. Do you need to put a cease and desist order on your lips? A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity (cease) and not to take it up again later (desist). Because my friends, even though we may sing “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” we are uttering a LIE! Words CAN, DO and WILL hurt you.