a day of reflection.

I've never had a problem with swearing.  That's always been an easy commandment/guideline to follow.  

However, unkind, pessimistic, and sarcastic remarks tend to easily flow from my mouth.  

Sometimes, a little too easily.

Which is why I love Elder Holland's talk on "The Tongue of Angels."  I listened to it this morning and it changed my entire outlook on my day.  Absolutely incredible.

If there's one thing I want to remember from his talk, it would be the following:

"The sin of verbal abuse knows no gender. Wives, what of the unbridled tongue in your mouth, of the power for good or ill in your words? How is it that such a lovely voice which by divine nature is so angelic, so close to the veil, so instinctively gentle and inherently kind could ever in a turn be so shrill, so biting, so acrid and untamed? A woman's words can be more piercing than any dagger ever forged, and they can drive the people they love to retreat beyond a barrier more distant than anyone in the beginning of that exchange could ever have imagined. Sisters, there is no place in that magnificent spirit of yours for acerbic or abrasive expression of any kind, including gossip or backbiting or catty remarks. Let it never be said of our home or our ward or our neighborhood that 'the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity . . . [burning] among our members.' "

{Jeffrey R. Holland, "The Tongue of Angels," Ensign, May 2007, 17}

I think that I've made it easy for myself to slip into joining in with gossip and backbiting.  I never want the words coming out of my mouth to be abrasive and acidic.  

I'm fixing it.

Today.