Morning Devotional

July 13, 2003

“You’re Wonderful”  

by Don Emmitte

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Just as the mouth tastes good food, so the ear tests the words it hears. Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to those who have lived many years. (Job 12:11-12 NLV). 

If anyone ever needed a good word, it would have been Job. Words are so powerful.  They can build or destroy so quickly. The following story illustrates this truth: 

A famous singer had been contracted to sing at a Paris opera house and ticket sales were booming. In fact, the night of the concert, the house was packed; every ticket had been sold. The feeling of anticipation and excitement was in the air as the house manager took the stage and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your enthusiastic support. I am afraid that due to illness, the man whom you've all come to hear will not be performing tonight. However, we have found a suitable substitute we hope will provide you with comparable entertainment." The crowd groaned in disappointment and failed to hear the announcer mention the stand-in's name. The environment turned from excitement to frustration. The stand-in performer gave the performance everything he had. When he had finished, there was nothing but an uncomfortable silence. . . No one applauded. Suddenly, from the balcony, a little boy stood up and shouted, "Daddy, I think you're wonderful!" The crowd broke into thunderous applause. 

Of the 800,000  words in the English language, 300,000 are technical terms. The average person knows 10,000 words and uses 5,000 in everyday speech. A journalist knows approximately 15,000 and uses around 10,000. In order to uncover the processes that destroy relationships, researchers studied couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retraced the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple's durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won't look remarkably similar in the early days.  

Yet when psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. "Hostile putdowns act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time," says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book We Can Work It Out. "In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can't get through a week without major blowups." Have you told the people you love they are wonderful today? You should!