The Power of Your Words

Death and life are in the power of the tongue,  and those who love it and indulge it will eat it’s fruit and bear the consequences of their words. Proverbs 18:21

It’s the end of her day. She sits at her vanity. She looks at her reflection in the mirror. For the first time that day she is real. She is vulnerable.  The time has come where she can unload the weight of the mask she has worn all day. She wipes away the makeup. And removes the eye lashes. Little by little she takes the steps to facing her real self in the mirror. This is a moment she dreads. Her mask is comfortable. She can hide behind it. She can be together, successful, and happy. But she’s none of those things. Instead she is tired. And feels drained. Empty even. As she looks at herself in the mirror, she notices those dark spots on her chest that she hates. She looks up to examine her face carefully and she notices something she had never noticed before this day. Her nose. She wonders how she had never noticed how flawed it was before.  That day was a normal day at work. Except that day someone she looked up to made a comment to her. She was told she was almost perfect. That the one thing holding her back from perfection was her nose. Next, she is told if she had a simple surgery by the surgeon they worked for, she would be perfect. How convenient right? She immediately remember’s that there was that other time recently at work that another female co-worker told her she needed to get her nose done as well. What had she done to welcome that kind of criticism into her life? She was just minding her own business. Unfortunately, that was the world she was living in. It must be true. If two women who she looked up to mentioned this flaw, then there had to be some truth behind it. She begins to imagine to herself what it would be like to be perfect. She tries to picture this unattainable image of perfection her co-workers described she would be, if she just got her nose fixed.  If only she knew how perfectly she was made. The creator of the universe makes no mistakes. But she is broken, and has not been able to see herself clearly for almost her entire life. To one person her nose was flawed, and the thing keeping her back from perfection. And to another person, her nose is what made her so captivating. She got so caught up in the 2 negative comments that had been made, that she didn’t even realize that for 25 years no one ever looked at her face and thought anything needed to be changed. In fact, her beautiful face was consistently noticed and complimented. Why is it that she clung so tightly to the negative, and never believed the positive? There will always be someone who has no hesitation in pointing out our flaws, and short comings. But, I wish we all could just fully grasp how much those people are hurting. You see, it wasn’t really about her at all. Those two negative comments actually had nothing to do with her. And had EVERYTHING to do with the two women making them. They were both suffering deeply. They hated themselves, and didn’t even realize it. It was easy to make careless comments to someone younger, and impressionable, because for a brief moment it relieved them of the pain they were feeling.

The young woman in this story is me. Two comments drove me to go to the extreme of cutting into my face to try and make it perfect. Two comments set in motion a series of events that would almost take my life. Now, I cannot sit here and play the victim and blame anyone for what happened to me. I was a grown woman. I made the decision to have surgery when I truly did not need it. Those two women are by no means responsible for what I went through. My point here is OUR WORDS HAVE POWER. The bible tells us in proverbs that the power of life and death is in the tongue. This scripture is probably one of the most important statements we can live by. Think before you speak. Because what you say may be forgotten in your mind the moment it leaves your lips, but the person you are directing it towards could take those words you spoke, and change the way they see themselves, feel about themselves, and treat themselves from that moment on. You get to decide to speak life or to speak death all day every day. Choose wisely.

I quickly put myself on the schedule for surgery. The day came fast. It was weird because I had gone through plastic surgery procedures before and always felt extremely excited for the day to come. But this time it was different. I felt this urgency to cancel and re think it. This other part of me, (the sick part of me) was determined to go through with it. For the first time in my christian walk I felt the battle between my flesh and my spirit. There was a war raging around me, and looking back I can see it so clearly. But back then, I was just a broken 25 year old, with an even more broken little girl deep within me. God gave me another opportunity to back out of this surgery. I showed up and the doctor was hours late on a previous case. I was running a low grade fever, and ultimately my surgery was pushed back to the following week. I went home and seriously considered canceling all together. But my mind was made up. There was no turning back for me. I had already gone through hell with my boss getting the time off, and my family was all totally against this. I was stubborn. And I was having this surgery. Surgery day had arrived. I was the first surgery of the day and this time I showed up at a different surgical center and this one was brand new. Everything was state of the art, shiny, and new. I went in and was prepped for surgery immediately. There was no waiting. I almost felt like the red carpet was rolled out for me. I was put to sleep, and that is when everything went wrong. A surgery that was supposed to be just an hour and a half turned into an eight hour surgery. My mother was waiting patiently in the lobby expecting me to be in and out pretty quick. They gave her a pager to keep her updated on the procedure. Every 30 minutes to an hour she would get a page saying “KC is doing great, all is going wonderful.” After about 3 hours she started to realize things weren’t going wonderful, because I should have been out of surgery by then. Eight hours later, the surgeon came out and told my mom that after they had put me to sleep they realized they did not have the correct instruments. They sent someone to another location where the doctor operates and she came back with another doctors instruments. They sent her back and when she came back there was a tear in the instrument bag. Which means, the instruments needed to be re sterilized. This process takes hours. This entire time I was laying there under general anesthesia while no one was operating. I laid there for six and a half hours before they even began the procedure.

I went home and started the recovery process. The entire time I felt like I was recovering from surgery, and in addition felt like my body was fighting a crazy infection. I definitely had a sinus infection, but this was different. I knew something wasn’t right. After contacting the doctor several times explaining my symptoms he suggested meditating and a lot of rest. He said I was very stressed out, and that doesn’t help the body recover from surgery.  About two weeks after surgery my nose was looking good and I was healing. But I was still very sick. I went to see my general practitioner and they took some blood and said we would just have to wait to see what was going on. That night I went home and while I was in the shower this huge scab came out of my nose and my nose started to bleed. Within hours I was running a high grade fever and my entire face was so sensitive you couldn’t even lightly touch it. I woke up the next morning to a swollen nose and a lot of other issues. I called my doctor again and they said to come strait to their office. As soon as they saw me they sent me to the hospital. My fever was so high I was becoming delirious and couldn’t drive myself, so my mom came and took me to the hospital. I was immediately admitted, and put in isolation to be treated for MRSA, which is a form of staph that is resistant to antibiotics. Most people that get this get it on an arm or leg which can result in amputation, I had it in my nose, close to my brain. I was put on the strongest antibiotics out there (which also destroyed my gut permanently). Basically, if I wasn’t responding to them by a certain time I was going back to surgery to have my nose completely removed and rebuilt. For a girl who was so vain, and sought validation through how perfect I looked this news was TRAGIC. Thankfully, my body responded to the antibiotics and I was in the clear. The road to recovery was a long one. I stayed in the hospital for 2 more weeks, and was sent home with a permanent IV, and home nurse for the next 3 months. For 2 years my health was an absolute mess.

This experience changed me. As painful, lonely, and hard as it was, a veil that was covering my eyes was removed. I had a long way to go to finding self love, but this was the part where I was stripped down to nothing, and the rebuilding began. God took a very broken girl who was clinging to the world, and believing lies about herself, and he allowed her to break even more. He didn’t break me. But he allowed it. Because he had a plan of restoration. Little by little he worked through my layers. Layers of self hatred, layers of shame from all the destruction my past caused me, layers of lies, and so much more. The power of surrender and what happens after your surrender is absolutely life changing and SO liberating. I would never take back this experience. God knew I was stubborn. He knew it would take something drastic to get through to me. What he did next is how I know he is real. He did a divine exchange. He took my ashes and he turned them into something beautiful and I will never take that for granted. Well I hope I don’t. Our words have power, you get to make the decision every day if you are going to speak life into someones life, or death. I hope this story helps you to become more aware of the words you choose to speak in your day to day life. Choose wisely.

These two pictures were taken within 24 hours of each other.

With Love and Blessings,

KC