My husband and I had a terrible fight days ago. A knock down, drag out fight. The kind of fight in a marriage that leads to someone (one or both parties) saying “I don’t want to don’t this anymore, I am done”. Maybe you’ve never uttered those ugly words to your husband, maybe he’s never dreamed of saying them to you, but me and mine…we’ve both used those very words as weapons many times throughout the course of our 20+ year long relationship. Words like this come from a place of hurt. They spring from frustration. These words are uttered when you want your spouse to feel how you are feeling, rejected. It hurts to say them almost as much as it hurts to hear them said. My advice? Watch. Your. Mouth. Our tongues, as small as they are carry a great deal of power. As beings created in the image of the Most High, our words have the capability to create AND destroy. We can speak life or we can speak death and as long as we believe what we are speaking at the time, as long as we mean it, it will manifest. So in the thick of this hellish fight between me and my husband, the man I am supposed to honor and respect, I began to think thoughts like ” I’ll be fine with or without him” , “I’m tired of him”, “Maybe we just need to separate”. Careful, think about what you’re thinking about, because thoughts become words, and we’ve already discussed that words turn into actions. Even when spoken carelessly. I almost told him I was done, I almost told him I was over this whole thing and we should end it now, I almost made plans to co-parent our young child but I didn’t. Instead I cried out to my Father and asked for His help. I asked Him what was wrong with us and what I needed to do. Do you know what He told me? To compliment my husband. COMPLIMENT HIM?! He hurt my feelings! He answered again, yes compliment him. I opened my Bible app and decided to read from one of many open devotional plans, this one about the words the speak. Wouldn’t you know, that days reading was all about complimenting your spouse and cheering for them. Welp, I guess that meant I had to.. as if The Most High Himself telling me wasn’t enough (yes, as far as I’ve come I am still at times just a stiff necked chosen child of Yah, wandering in the wilderness). In the interim, my husband had written me a letter. Something he hasn’t done since we were teens. And he expressed his feelings in a way he hadn’t done before. He expressed his desire to fix our marriage, not just “work on it” , it gave me pause. So, I wrote him back. And my letter was full of The Spirit, because even though I was writing, the Spirit was speaking because I said things that in over 20 years I never have (but certainly should have). I praised him for the wonderful man he is. I told him I’m proud of him. I told him all the secret thoughts that I think about about him, but until now I felt that saying them would make me weak. Naturally we made up afterwards. It was a beautiful tender moment we shared that I will remember forever. I said all this to say, use your position as his wife to edify him. Build him up. Compliment him. Be his cheerleader. Our words either bring life or death, what are you speaking over your husband and your marriage?