Words....

Soon after DW and I were married, we had some company over. Three other couples. We decided it would be fun to play the Newlywed Game, which had been given to us at one of our wedding showers. We opened the brand new game, read the directions and got ready to play. Things were going pretty good, and DW and I were winning by a long shot. The pressure was mounting and the other couples were catching us.

It was the guys turn to answer the questions, so the girls stepped out. After they had finished the questions, we came back in to give our own answers. The first question was something easy about hair color. DW knows I’m a blonde and have been since I got my first highlights at 15….(with the exception of the short time when we were dating and he made some comment about liking dark hair…It wont take a rocket scientist to figure out what I did after that…tried to go back to my natural darker color to impress my new boyfriend (I cried for 2 hours after having it done and washed it 25 times when I got home thinking I could wash some of the ‘dark’ out)…it didn’t take long for DW to decide and tell me that he loved him some BLONDE hair…2 weeks after my dark hair stint I was blonde again, and fully intend to be as long as I have hair---which isn’t looking like it will be long, since it’s doing the whole after-baby thing and falling out…). The next question was again, an easy one for everyone… something probably about where your first date was… but the last question of the round…oh, that last question…here’s where it got interesting….
The proctor for the round read it aloud: “What cartoon character best suits your spouse?” Easy, I thought… In the bag… Surely he’d put Cinderella. I mean no, I didn’t have a wicked step-mother, and no, I didn’t have to clean all day long and no, I didn’t have sing-a-longs with mice and birds…but I did call HIM my Prince Charming and how much closer to Cinderella do you have to get if you have a Prince Charming???

The other couples answered then it got to us. I confidently blurted out, “Cinderella”…. He got that look on his face. That look of “NOOOOOOOO”… With terror in his eyes and a face that had gone from tan to ghost white in a matter of 2 seconds, he flipped over his card… The card read: “Snoopy.”

Snoopy. As in, the DOG.

“WHAT?!?! Snoopy?!?!? He’s a DOG and a HE…” I questioned (quite loudly)… to which DW replies, “Well I couldn’t think of anything else”…after going back and forth, it was made clear that DW had thought the answer had to be a cartoon character, like from the comic strips. That still didn’t make me feel better. I mean, no, I couldn’t think of any comic strip characters either, but if he thought of Snoopy, surely he could have written the “girl from Snoopy” or something…I think anything would have been better than SNOOPY… Hello, he’s a dog… After another few minutes of us going back and forth (and the other couples wanting to stab themselves with their pencils) I finally said, “What in the world about Snoopy reminds you of me?!?!?” In a final attempt to shut me up, he say’s, “he’s cute??!?!?.” Needless to say, he has N.E.V.E.R. lived that one down.

Last night, our devotional was on using “word pictures” to communicate something better to your spouse. The parallel the author provided was how Jesus often used parables to paint a clearer picture for his followers. At the end of each devotion, there are a couple questions for you to discuss.

One of last night’s questions was:

“Jesus often used word pictures to make a point. What word picture describes your feelings about us?”

We were both pretty tired and I was out of any creativity I might have, so I sat there waiting on him to answer first. Finally, he says, “well it’s not Snoopy, I’ll tell you that!”

I laughed so hard. Yep, he’s still my Prince Charming, and I’ll be his “Snoopy” any day!

I couldn’t help but think about how he’ll never live that one down. We laugh and joke about it now. But at the time, it wasn’t very funny to me. I thought about the lasting effects of our words and how powerful they are.

I was totally convicted as I thought about how many times I am so quick to open my mouth and say hurtful things even when I don’t mean to. I remembered a scripture I read a few months ago, that I was going to write down, but forgot to…so on my search to find it (which I haven’t yet), I found this one:



“Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” – James 3:5



Whew. Did that one ever hit me in the face….I needed that one. I needed to be reminded that this small tongue of mine can do big and hurtful things. I needed to be reminded of what big damage little words can cause. However, I didn’t need to be reminded of exactly how hurtful words can be. We all have scars as a result of someone else’s words. But I needed to be face to face with the Truth and realize how much heartache I have the ability to and have caused by my words. I also needed to be reminded that I should to be, “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” as God’s Word says in James 1:19…I need to practice those things in every relationship in my life….from my husband and close family, to my friends, and even the aggravating cashier at the grocery store.

Speaking, of speaking… we started our new bible study yesterday. It’s a study on the things we speak to/tell ourselves and how to change those negative thoughts and lies we make ourselves believe. Like any woman, I'm pretty hard on myself, so I’m excited to get started and see what great things God is going to do through this study.

Carrie got a wonderful babysitter to come to watch Allie Claire & Annabelle while our group meets. We were kind of worried about how it would go. We really wanted to be able to stay focused and enjoy our time in our small group and with children around it’s kind of hard to do that. At the same, time, we don’t like to be far from them…So we thought we’d try this the first time and see how it went. I think it’s going to be perfect…We set the girls up in the back of the house (Belle napped for more than half the time in her room) & Allie Claire played with the sitter and watched a DVD in mine & DW’s room… We never heard a peep out of any of them!

Here’s some pics of the BFF’s yesterday in Belle’s room. (one is with a flash and one's without...that's why the lighting looks different in the 2nd one)... Do yall know how hard it is to get a nearly 7 & 9 month old to look and smile at the camera at the same time?!?!? Almost impossible....

So I have to ask… What would ya’ll have said if you had to answer the question from the “Newlywed Game?” “What cartoon character best describes your spouse?”
(It can be any animated character…that’s the word they should have used… surely DW wouldn’t have said 'Snoopy' if they had said ‘animated’ character”…

~amw~