LOVE BETTER CAMP

by Linda Dominique Grosvenor
www.LindaDominiqueGrosvenor.com

Sometimes I can tell people are waiting for me to say something horrible and insulting about an ex. I don’t do it. I won’t do it. Because of the God in me I can’t do it. That’s not who I am and it’s not who God created me to be. But I know people in similar situations who can’t wait to tell something private and embarrassing about their ex, be it ex-boy or girlfriend or ex-husband or wife. How you respond about your ex, however, says more about “you” than it does “them”. I’m not talking about people using an actual example from their relationship to illustrate a point they’re trying to make or using an example of something in their past as a testimony. I’m mean, telling mean, and vindictive private things that nobody outside of the relationship has a right to know, just so that it mars that person’s thought of the person you are talking about. What it says about you is that you are unlearned that the tongue can destroy you and put hardships in your way that didn’t need to be there–hardships that only appeared in your path because you wouldn’t close your mouth.

I was a single parent for 18 years and I can say that in all of those years although my son’s father had never given him any financial support or bought him anything besides a bag of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures one Christmas in 1988. Despite that fact, I never once went around badmouthing him to my mother, my sisters or brother or to my child. It wasn’t for me to mar my son’s image of his father. It wasn’t for me to drill it into his head that his father wasn’t a provider and wasn’t ever there when he needed him. I knew that God would allow him to find out on his own, without me constantly mumbling on and on about how “no good” I thought he was. And so I guarded my tongue and made the best of it, because if I believed Hebrews 10:30 then I had to believe that God would take care of us and handle his “non-support” of his son as well. It wasn’t for me to use my tongue in an act of vengeance. That’s not what the mouth or the tongue was created for.

People over the years often ask me how I made it through 18 years of single parenting making little over $20,000 a year working for city, going to school full time at night, getting $0 in child support and never once allowing my child to go hungry or finding a way to get my rent, utilities and other bills paid. Sure, my mom and friends helped out on occasion, but the victorious glory goes to God and God alone. I know people who receive child support from their child’s mother or father and they still can’t make ends meet and here I was not receiving a dime and God was keeping us in perfect peace. My son never went to public school, he went to schools for which I had to pay tuition for his entire life from 1st grade through 12th grade and I give the honor to God for being able to make it. I believe it was me keeping my tongue that allowed God to continue to meet my needs/our needs. We don’t understand how much damage talking too much does, but before we ever part our lips to say an ill word against anybody we really should and instead use our mouth and tongue to praise the One who has kept us from falling.

My son finally did learn on his own how his father wasn’t there for him when he graduated from high school. It was the first and only time he ever asked him for anything. He asked for money to pay for his cap, gown and yearbook and his father never got back to him. I didn’t have to teach him that lesson. I didn’t have to badmouth his father to drive home that point. He saw it himself and realized that even though I kept my opinions to myself and it appeared as if I was doing everything all on my own, I really wasn’t. He knew that God was there the entire time moving every obstacle out of our path as I used my words to glorify Him in praise and worship–the way it was intended.

“And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.” James 3:6