The Power of Words, by Georgie Tennant

Words are powerful.  I've been thinking about that a lot, recently.  Not the greatest revelation ever uttered on a blog for writers, I know - but something we can easily take as forgranted as oxygen or running water.

The reasons for this have been manifold.  Let me explain.

Firstly, my beloved 81-year-old Nan had a stroke last month, suddenly and cruelly changing everything about life as she knew it.  I'm not talking the sort of white-haired, diminishing, petite old-lady kind of Nan either - she is 5ft 10 and plays (played 🙄) golf twice a week, makes the most incredible jam, flies around Tesco like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep and can talk the hind legs off fields of donkeys.  Could.  Because that's where the words thing comes in.  One of the most heartbreaking effects of the stroke is that her words are all gone.  Almost entirely.  She can say 'yes,' 'no,' 'well,' 'for,' and 'basically.'  Without words, she is horribly frustrated and visibly reduced.  The nurses can only see her as a poorly old lady on a ward full of many others.  She can't keep them listening for hours, regaling proud tales of her five grandchildren and four great grandchildren.  She can't explain to them the pain of the loss of my Grandad, so very recently, and the lifetime of love they had together.  Even those of us who know her best can only partly guess from charades and a few stray syllables, some of the myriad things she is trying to communicate to us, each day.  We pray for words to return.

The next thing that got me thinking about words was a phrase I heard at the annual Christian camp, One Event, which many from my church attend every year.  It is always a full and exhausting weekend, with so many meetings and sermons, that taking it all in its impossible. But one of the phrases that stuck with me, was "I see in you..." The speaker was promoting the importance of these four small words, encouraging us to imagine the things we might unlock in others, the paths on which we might set them, by recognising and naming the potential we see in them.  Don't we all long for that - someone to believe in us, notice our gifting, encourage us in it, champion us, believe in us? While we wait and pray for it to happen to us, let's get on with sowing that which we long for ourselves, into the lives of others.  Four small words.  Enough to make a difference.

Thirdly, a Facebook meme, posted by another writer, hit me square between the eyes and left a dent.  'Why bother?' it said, 'Because right now, there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.' Wow.  This has certainly been my experience.  Sometimes, when I've struggled to articulate the pain of loss, I find others who have succeeded and their words resonate and I feel less alone.  Other times, I have had the privilege of doing just that for others and there is great redemptive power in hearing someone say, 'That resonated,' or 'Yes! Exactly that! Me too!' The words can be hard to pin down, painful to write, horribly vulnerable to share (I wrote another post here about the struggle to find the right words). But they can be enough to pour healing balm on someone's wounds, somewhere, helping them to sting a little less, heal a little more. What a tremendous privilege.

As writers of words let's keep seeking them, finding them, gifting them to others - always remembering to humbly offer them (in all their stuttering incompleteness) to the only Word fully capable of speaking life and hope, with no stuttering or incompleteness at all.

Georgina Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 10 and 7 who keep her exceptionally busy. She feels intimidated by having to provide an author-biography, when her writing only extends, currently, to attempting to blog, writing the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local paper occasionally, and having a poem published in a book from a National Poetry Competition. She feels a bit more like a real author now the ACW Lent Book is out and she has a piece in it! Her musings about life can be found on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk