“A soft answer turneth away wrath…”
“A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.”
Proverbs 15:1
There’s no teacher like personal experience. I have had personal experiences with both soft answers and grievous words. I know for myself that this Proverb speaks truth.
I’ll start with a personal story about grievous words: When we lived in New York City, I was walking down 74th street after spending a happy afternoon in Central Park with Jonah and Lucie when they were little. Side note, if anyone here has lived in NYC with kids, you’ll know that parenting there is very public, my children’s tantrums on the subway or at the bus stop were all witnessed by crowds of strangers, and it wasn’t unusual for strangers to give me their opinions on what my kids should or should not be doing or wearing, it’s all part of the deal.
Anyway, as we were walking along, I was pushing Lucie in a stroller and 4 year old Jonah was running and playing a few steps behind me, jumping off of the bottom steps of the brownstones we went past from time to time, lost in his own imaginary world. Suddenly, a woman I had never met before came up behind us and started to criticize me in an unkind way for not keeping Jonah closer to me. The mama bear came out and I reacted defensively, and told her in a firm tone that he was just fine. She reacted to my defensiveness and things just escalated from there. It turned ugly so fast. I couldn’t believe that within moments, I went from being carefree and peaceful to being filled with hurt and anger. It felt so surreal, fighting with this woman, but there we were, yelling at each other. I learned a painful lesson that day. While I wanted to feel entitled to my feelings of anger and hurt and to feel like the victim in the situation, I had to face myself and the truth that I had added just as much fuel to the fire as she did. To this day, I wish I could have a do-over… if I could try again, instead of reacting defensively when she criticized my mothering, I wish I could tell her, “Thank you so much for watching out for my little guy- I really appreciate it.” We would have left as the sisters that we are, and our hearts would have felt SO different had I chosen a soft answer.
We are in this mortal experience to learn from opposition… knowing the bitter first hand can help us choose and appreciate the sweet. Amazingly for us, Christ offers limitless do-overs and His infinite Atonement can help turn even the ugliest of experiences into precious lessons, the most difficult people into essential teachers that show us where we’re stuck and where we need healing and help. Self-awareness is essential, because we can’t repent of what we can’t see in ourselves. As we progress in our spiritual development, we may start to see in ourselves the characteristics of the natural man, such as enmity and self-seeking. The natural man is reactive. On the other hand, “Responsiveness” is of the Spirit and must be strengthened through spiritual practice. In Ether 12:27 Christ promises us that “if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” What a potent verse- “My Grace is sufficient” and “I will make weak things become strong unto them… these are not things we do ourselves. Our part is being willing to see ourselves honestly, which is so hard because it is so painful. But again, we can’t repent of what we can’t see, and those moments of intense clarity are a gift from a loving, refining God who is completely committed to our Joy and who loves us enough to polish us.
Our words reveal our hearts. Neal A Maxwell in his talk entitled, The Pathway of Discipleship, says, “Conversations and decisions in which we engage, even if they seem small, expose the heart and the mind and their furnishings. Brigham Young once said, “You cannot hide the heart, when the mouth is open” (JD 6:74).“
In order to have soft answers, we need soft hearts. The real work needs to happen internally in the realm of the heart. Choosing a soft heart is the hardest but sweetest work we will ever do on this earth.
There is a quote by Lao Tzu that reads, “Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
Think about playdough… if playdough is soft, it is actually unbreakable… it’s when it’s hard and dry, that it’s the most weak. It’s interesting to compare that to the condition of our hearts.
What are things that harden our hearts? Some of the things that I thought of are: enmity, self-pity, pride, ego, defensiveness, blame, playing the victim, selfishness, self-absorption, just to name a few. What are things that soften our hearts? Humility, being willing to ask ourselves, “could I be wrong?”, seeing from the other person’s perspective, validating another’s feelings and perspective even if it’s not the same as ours, slowing down, seeking understanding, listening, self-awareness, sincere repentance, prayer, Grace, and yielding to the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
Mosiah 3:19 reads, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Why is a soft heart so powerful? Because a soft heart can be under the influence of the Holy Ghost. A hard heart is of the natural man, and we just read that the natural man is an enemy to God. A hard heart can not feel the Spirit. It’s being under the influence of the Spirit that makes the difference in our ability to communicate with softness and love.
Elder Enzio Bushe says, “None of us have enough wisdom, enough intelligence, enough knowledge, enough skills, or enough courage, by ourselves, to master our lives and even to succeed in life unless we learn what it means to surrender ourselves into the arms of the Lord and be filled with the Spirit… We…should not be satisfied to be one single moment of our waking hours without the insightful, powerful influence of the Spirit.”
2 Nephi 32: 2-3 reads,
“Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of angels save it were by the Holy Ghost?
Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.”
In Elder F. Enzio Busche’s autobiography called Yearning for the Living God, he shares a personal experience when the Spirit told him what to do in a really difficult situation. I’ll share in his words:
“One day, I was at home sitting at my desk working on a project when [our] son came home from school. My room was near the entrance, so I overheard him use abusive, degrading words toward his little sister. He had no idea I was home and felt safe being rude. I was completely shocked and filled with rage at his behavior. I jumped up from my chair to go after him. While taking the few steps necessary to reach the door, I silently asked Heavenly Father what I should do in order to handle the situation.
I opened the door and confronted my son face-to-face. As he realized I had overheard him, his expression reflected shock and fear. My natural inclination would have been to grab him by the collar, shout at him, and maybe even spank him. To my great surprise, however, I felt an overwhelming feeling of calmness and joy, and I saw myself behaving in a way completely different from my nature. With a big smile on my face, I reached out my hand toward him and said, “Welcome home, son!” He was startled by my reaction…. I heard myself saying, “Would you please come with me to the living room because I want to talk to you.”
We went into the living room…. I heard myself praising him, telling him what a wonderful young man he was, and how I recognized the difficult time he was going through in his life…Then I talked to him about the battle that every human being must fight – how inside of us is the “real me,” the child of God that wants us to do good. There is another force that prompts us to just let go and do things we ordinarily never would do. I expressed my trust in his goodness and my belief that he would be able to overcome the temptation to use foul language…
Our son began to protest, saying, “You always see me as good, but I am bad! I am awful!’ I...explained to him about the two voices that struggle within us… I was then able to explain the atonement of Christ and why we love Christ so much for making it possible for us to be washed clean from our sins… We felt a wonderful feeling of peace and joy. We cried and hugged each other, expressing our love.”
Love, not anger, changes hearts. And when hearts change, behaviors change, relationships change, and lives change.
I testify that Jesus Christ can change our hearts, change our thoughts, change our perceptions, soften what is hard, heal what is broken, and strengthen what is weak. Through Christ, we can overcome the hardness and enmity of the natural man and become Saints with hearts like His.
May we choose to do the internal spiritual daily work necessary to become soft-hearted so that we may be capable of choosing soft words in difficult moments. I testify that this is possible through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.