Good Words: Stories About Unexpected Words of Grace

By Joe Campeau

Words contain incredible power to shape the moments of our lives.  

 

Words matter.  We use them to express our love and describe our dreams, speak our joy and share our sadness.  With words we welcome a baby into life, or whisper a final goodbye to someone we can't bear to lose.  Words have the ability to comfort and uplift, challenge and tear down, empower and inspire.

   

Strung together, words form the narrative of our personal stories, and join us to Jesus' story.  They give shape to our experience and become signposts pointing to how Jesus becomes real and present in our lives.

 

What if a single word could frame a fresh understanding of Jesus?  Might you consider it a good word?

 

PRAISE FOR GOOD WORDS

"Good Words is entertaining and soul enriching…I found myself wrapped up thoroughly, enjoying every single paragraph and page.  

It was BEAUTIFUL, moving, enlightening and inspirational".

                                                         -- Mike Gabriel (Director of Disney's Pocahontas)

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grace Haven Press
• Release date: Jan 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201349158

Joe Campeau

Joe Campeau served as a pastor in Montana, Washington, Massachusetts, and California.  He grew up, went to school, and met his wife in Minneapolis.  Now retired and living in Washington, he enjoys photography, travel, cycling, and hanging out with his family.  He loves adventures of all kinds and thinks that following Jesus is the greatest adventure of all.

Book preview

WORDS

Moving is the worst . 

I would sooner have my teeth pulled from my head with a pliers, than move.  Nothing about it is the least bit enjoyable.  Since the day Adam and Eve were forced to pack up their newly made garments of skin and leave the Garden following their suddenly acquired taste for forbidden fruit, moving is one of those human experiences that most of us try to avoid.

Moving consists mostly of pleading with friends to help pack boxes and load trucks, while apologizing for taking advantage of their friendship.  Plus, they will never again trust another phone call from you.  It’s all muttering about how you will never ever do this again, mixed with heavy lifting, and going through years’ worth of junk you’d long forgotten but still don’t know what to do with.  All-in-all on the fun meter moving falls somewhere between major surgery and food poisoning.

In the first fifteen years of our marriage Barbie and I moved thirteen times to four different states, starting in the Midwest and spanning both coasts. Each succeeding move seemed worse than the previous one.  I was a pastor and served in various congregations during that time, which explains the moves.  It wasn’t until 1995 that we came to a congregation in which we sunk roots.  We stayed for the next twenty-four years.

Recently, however, I retired and we hit the road, relocating from Southern California to the Seattle area.  Two of our children and three of our grandkids live there.  It made sense to sell our house and move a little closer to family.  But it once again involved moving.  Moving after a year is bad enough; living a quarter century in the same house makes it a nightmare.

Still, stumbling across things you saved and forgot redeems the agony a bit.  I was wading through files of old papers and drawers stuffed with odds and ends that had never found a home, when I came upon two notes.  One was written by my daughter Lisa, the other by my son Jeff.  Both were composed years ago.  This was the first time I had read them in all those years.

The one from Lisa was simple and short, written on lined notebook paper.  hi Dad it said, with a little heart above the i.  I love you very much!  (Another little heart sat beneath the exclamation point).  Across yet a third heart – Always, Lisa.  PS I wrote this 1-6-98.

She was fourteen years old at the time, perched on the cusp of the most challenging years for a teenage girl (and her parents).  From this end of the calendar, I knew what lay ahead for us, and it wouldn’t always be pretty.

My heart cracked open like a clamshell as I read that note, momentarily exposing the soft, vulnerable inside, something I more often keep protected and shielded away.  I was totally unprepared for the reaction that welled up in me.

So few words.  And yet that was all it took to leave me feeling like life had just handed to me every good thing it could possibly offer.  I didn’t do anything.  I didn’t say anything.  I just folded those words like a winning lottery ticket and slipped them into a drawer in my heart. 

Of course, I have other notes with other words stored in there.  You can’t always just keep the good ones.  The hard ones remain, too.  If Lisa’s I love you very much flattened me with its grace, then the other letter I found from Jeff wrecked me with its pain ... and my guilt.

This note had been composed several years before Lisa’s, in the distinctive scrawl of a 10-year-old, the cursive more drawn on the page than written.  It was addressed to me.

Dear Dad...

Immediately I remembered the reason I received it.  Barbie was going to visit her sister ten states away, and I would be home taking care of the kids.

I’ll be fine, I assured her, with all the confidence of one who spent most days, and a lot of evenings, at work.  I can handle this on my own. We’ll have a great time.

Um...that’s kind of what I’m worried about, Barbie said as she dropped another sweater into her suitcase.  She had never before been away this amount of time, leaving our three kids—ages ten, nine, and seven – in my care.  You know it’s not all fun and games.

Of course.  But secretly that was exactly what I expected.

And so it was, for most of the time.  When I spoke with Barbie in the evenings, I would let her know of the great day we had.  I thought I could hear the smallest trace of envy in her voice because I didn’t seem to be encountering the daily parenting challenges she regularly faced.  This made me feel pleased with my parenting skills.

How come they never act like that for me? she wondered.

Because you’re always home with them, making them do stuff they don’t want to do.  But I’m the party guy because I’m not here as often.  I hoped that would make her feel better; judging by the long pause on the other end of the line, I’m not sure I had been totally successful.  Poorly chosen words can do that.

Well, you have fun being the party guy.  I guess I’ll have to retrain them for real life when I get back.

Though it had been a good week, as her return drew closer the kids were getting restless, I was getting tired, and I was not feeling much like the party guy anymore.  I was, however, absolutely looking forward to reporting to Barbie that I had not only survived; I thrived.  Plus, to my credit, not a single one of our kids had run away. 

They were missing her, though, so I suggested that they each write a portion of a letter to mom on the computer. 

She would love getting a note from you, I said.

Lisa wrote her section first, then Sam and finally, Jeff.  They were upstairs, I was down, when I heard the unmistakable sound of trouble.  Two boys’ voices were taunting and bickering, and it was escalating by the minute.  My patience was wearing thin.  We made it this far, I thought.  We’re so close.  I had no intention of explaining to Barbie why one of our boys had suffered deep bodily trauma at the others’ hands while on my watch. 

I charged upstairs to settle the dispute in my most commanding, fatherly way.  When I came through the door, eyes darting like a carnivore, I saw Jeff sitting at the computer.  The screen was blank.  Whatever was there had vanished.  Gone.  All that remained was a forlorn cursor flashing on an empty monitor. 

Eager to assist me, Sam volunteered what happened.  Jeff did it.

Making a quick assessment of who was to blame, and reaching for guilt (one of the handiest of all parental tools), I chewed into them about how sad mom would be that her letter was now gone forever because of their misbehavior. 

How hard is it to write a letter to mom? I demanded.  We were going to surprise her, and now it’s all wrecked because you two can’t get along. I really feel bad for her, not to mention Lisa, whose letter you also just deleted.  Mom would have really liked that letter because she’s missing you so much.

Guilt-speak is like a sledgehammer wielded indiscriminately.  Guilt-producing words are good for breaking, battering, bruising and bloodying, but they’re not of much use if your goal is the significantly more delicate task of building, shaping and healing.

I zeroed in on Jeff, maybe because he was our computer wizard even back then.  And, he was the oldest.  Having grown up as the youngest in my family, I knew from experience it was always the oldest child’s fault. 

I came down on him like he had just kicked the walker out from under an old woman and stolen her purse.

You know how a computer works!  How could you have let this happen?  By that point I was way beyond good parenting (or even a reasonable reaction to the situation).

It’s what prompted the letter I came across the other day.  He apparently wrote it later in the evening after the squall of my frustration had spent itself.

Dear Dad, Jeff wrote.  I don't like how during your speech, you kept picking on me like I was the problem.  I was part of the problem but not all of it.  Now I will give you a total recount on what happened.  This I promise is the exact, full truth!!!

Speech was the term he used to characterize my outburst.  Ouch.  It was the truth, though; he had named it for what it was.  He went on to outline what had taken place, and how I was totally mistaken in my assumptions.

"I had just finished my part of the letter when Sam came over and saw that I had written in back of my name, the awesome guy, as a joke for mom.  Sam didn’t like it, but I thought I should keep it if I wanted.  After all it was my letter.  I was just about to move the cursor to send when Sam put his hands over my eyes.  I tried to get them off, but he just clamped them back on the second I took them off.  I moved the mouse in what I thought was the right way.  When I pressed enter Sam took his hands off my eyes.  I looked up and saw I had cleared.  I was just as mad as everyone else".

Then, instead of closing it, Love, Jeff, he twisted the knife by signing off:

Don't Love, Jeff

I was devastated.  What was wrong with me?  I had lost my temper, blamed the wrong child, lashing out because it would make me feel better.  Who let me be a parent?  It crushed my heart, but not nearly as much as Jeff’s must have been, to resort to signing his letter as he did.

Rereading it now, a letter that I have kept all these years, I thought about how there have been times when someone should have sewn my lips shut, when I'd have been better off if my tongue had been surgically removed.  Maybe someone should have given me a brain transplant, or a different heart.  It reminded me of how fragile parenting can be and how easily we can gum it up. 

For all the good things we want to give to our children, we can also pass on to them the very things in us they would have been better off without, and fail to hand down things that we should.

How incredibly powerful a few simple words can be. 

As surely as an unprompted I love you from your child or grandchild can peel away all sorts of crusty barnacles, every parent knows what it is like when that same child one day, in a fit of rage, screams, I hate you.  I wish you weren’t my parent! 

And at that moment, though we’re careful not to show it, inside the damage is done and our heart is suddenly chewed into mulch by a lawnmower of simple words.

Words matter.  They are a central part of life.  We hear them.  We think with them.  We speak them.  We write them.  We read them.  We sing them. 

With words we express our love and describe our dreams.  We speak our joy and share our sadness.  We use words to welcome a baby into life, or whisper a final goodbye to someone we can’t bear to lose.  Words have the power to comfort and uplift, challenge and tear down, empower and inspire.  Words can harm: words can heal. 

I recently Googled how many words in the English language and got an estimate of about 750,000.  That’s a lot of words, especially when I play Scrabble with Barbie.  She seems to know all of them.  I’m the one who’s supposed to be the professional with words.  I make words like cat and sat, while she plays words like quixotic and equalize.  That’s why I refuse to play anymore. 

Of those 750,000 words, one study suggested that the average person uses about 20,000 words per day to communicate a universe of ideas, emotions, events and desires.  Even that sounds like a lot to me, given how if you watch TV, most of the words seem to have something to do with superheroes or cops.

Some words are profoundly sad, like Jeff’s "Don’t love".  Goodbye is another one.  So is If only.  Almost. Lonely. 

Others words seem inherently mysterious, and convey something bigger than we can comprehend, like I love you.  And some words are just beautiful and fun: laughter, friend, freedom.

And of course, the two best words of all time – ice cream.

I love words.  I love them for their beauty and sound and for their ability, when carefully chosen, to transport you to a particular setting.  They have the ability to shine a light on a new insight.  Words elicit tears and laughter, and create emotional responses.  Strung together, they tell stories. 

It’s no surprise, then, that God is a God of words.  The Book of Genesis makes it clear that God used words to speak the creation into being.  Over and over again, like the chorus of a song, the first chapter repeats the same refrain: God said...  And then, what God said is what actually happened.  To which God said another word, one of the best: Good.

That’s because when God speaks, His words have the power to create something new.  When God uses words, where once there was nothing, now there is something.  Where once there was void, now there is creation.

Words are at the heart of God’s story.  He wrote the words of His law with His own finger on tablets of stone.  Later, in Jeremiah, He would promise to write those same laws on our heart.  He voiced words of promise to His people, of a covenant and a Savior.  His story is written in words.

But the amazing power of God’s words is not limited to the creation.  They still have the power to create life from death, to sew hope from despair, to transform sorrow to joy, guilt to freedom, a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

John, in his gospel, goes so far as to describe Jesus as the most astounding word ever spoken, the Word of God.  All our words are only stuttering and stammering in comparison to that Word.  Jesus is the final, perfect Word through whom God has spoken most clearly about Himself, through whom God has opened a window to His soul and given us the key to His heart. 

The same God whose words created everything, comes to us in Jesus with the power to recreate us and make us new.  Just as in Genesis, when Jesus – the Word – speaks, things happen.  In John 11, He only has to say three words, Lazarus, come out and just like that, Lazarus came out of his tomb. 

While we sometimes struggle with our words, God needed only one Word to perfectly communicate the depth and mystery, the passion and overwhelming grace of who He is. 

Maybe that’s why, because He is the Word of God, Jesus loved to tell stories.  Stories are simply words that come to life.

Whenever Jesus wanted His listeners to understand something about His