“Just as being too busy gives you nightmares, so being a fool makes you a blabbermouth.”  Ecclesiastes 5:3 (TLB)

Who, Me?

I glanced out my kitchen window just in time to see a pair of redheaded woodpeckers on the trunk of an oak tree. If you’ve ever been around woodpeckers, you know that it’s often their squawking chatter that first gets your attention. They can be LOUD!

As I looked closer, I could tell they were a pair, male and female, one with a bright red head and the other with the duller red, characteristic of the female of the species. They were having the time of their lives, racing up and down and all around the trunk of the tree, when I realized it was the female who was doing “all the talkin’.”

At one point, they were beak to beak, and she was still going for it. I had to laugh at her persistence to get her point across. What was she saying anyway? “Harry, you forgot to put a new twig in the nest? When ya’ gonna do it, huh?” Or, “Really, dear, your conduct is for the birds!”

I’ve read the research and heard teachings that suggest that generally, with humans, it’s the female who has the more developed language center of the brain, so we tend to be the more verbal in a marriage (those poor, poor fellows). Hey, we’ve got a lot to say, and usually not enough time to say it. Sometimes we have to talk fast, to get it all said! Of course, our Creator has endowed men with many gifts that we women just don’t have! He made us to complement each other in so many ways. Can you imagine the noise in our world if we ALL had the Gift of Gab?

But really, after many years of marriage, I’ve come to recognize that glazed over look that comes over my husband’s face as I relate twelve things at once. He really doesn’t digest all that fast and furious info, so he just zones out and goes to his happy place. Now, I can choose to get annoyed at this (and launch into verbal overdrive), or perhaps rethink my strategy. Could I have pared that down a bit into bite-size pieces? Could I c-h-o-o-s-e my words more carefully? Probably so.

“Dear Lord, we sure don’t want to be like that person described in Ecclesiastes who “…being a fool made her/him a blabbermouth.” Please help us to be wise stewards of these amazing instruments—our mouths. Amen!”