Tongue of Angels

I believe the power of language in a relationship is very strong. I know this from experience within the relationships within my own life in which I have communicated either very well or very poorly with one or more people and seen the consequences of these excellent or horrible choices. I’ve also seen these effects when they’ve been positively or negatively conducted towards myself from others that I either know very well or I don’t know at all. The language we use often conveys our own opinions, our ideas, our values or lack thereof, our intentions, our mood/attitude/emotions/feelings, and it can ultimately define the relationship we choose to build or destroy with one another. To make our language more closely resemble the tongue of angels, we must first learn to love ourselves in thought, speech, and deed so that we may be better able to love one another and show it through our choice of words as we speak to them.
All too often is the case we either say something sarcastically, jokingly, or any unintentional conveying of strong feelings or emotions and the listener or recipient of the message misinterprets it entirely to a different message than it was actually intended for. Such cases are when one can say, “What are you doing here?” “Who invited you?” “When are you going back home?” “Are you seeing anyone?” The emphasis, tone, speed of the speech, or lack of any of these things and much more can influence the language conveyed in the message and thus impacting a different attitude towards the relationship.
Elder Holland spoke of the way husbands speak to wives and how wives speak to husbands and just as well as how to speak to the children. He didn’t go into too much depth as to how abusive or bad the language really can relate to each other within the bonds of marriage and families, but I have experienced these profound teachings in my own life.
My father grew up in Panama with a father who later separated or divorced and had been in the military and on top of it, was originally from New York. My mom was born and raised in the neighboring country of Costa Rica and had a decently peaceful youth except for being orphaned, but nonetheless had a calm upbringing to the best of my understanding. My father grew up being yelled at, seeing his siblings beaten for misbehavior, and took up a career as a policeman and was baptized a convert in his early twenties.
My father’s choice of language is completely different than that of many members of the Church and he recognizes his weakness, yet it still affects the environment of the home greatly. It truly can make or break the Spirit within the home. Too many times has it been broken, driven away, and left a sickly and ugly feeling about the home to the extent one wants to leave yet has nowhere to go. Too few are the times the home has the sweet Spirit abiding in abundance where one never would want to leave.
We all realize we need to make changes here and there. I love how Elder Holland said that never should a sweet spirit of a woman ever use her angelic voice to dare utter such shrill and harsh words with the tongue, neither the priesthood bearer who through the same mouth gives blessings dare utter similar lashings of the mouth. I honestly know that if we think better of ourselves, think better and look for the better in other people, we really will see it in ourselves and in others. We can learn to love ourselves and others and our language really will change. In Brazil, I never knew any of the Portuguese curse words for the longest time. Why bother learning them if I’ll never use them? Nevertheless, someone had told me some anyways, but I didn’t care to know! It was a wonderful time to use the tongue of angels to spread the message of angels. This is the best message the world has to offer, to share, to pass along. Why would any of us resort to harsh language if we all strive to better ourselves? Let us start with the tongue. As Elder Holland said, we’ve learned how to master just about everything in this world – the earth, the wind, the water, and fire. But the tongue we have yet to master. By starting to love ourselves and one another, we will master the tongue that we have poorly chosen to master us. I know we can. It wouldn’t be commanded of us to be of good cheer if we couldn’t accomplish it.