What Are Your Words Worth?

Have you ever stopped to imagine how much your words are worth?

Recently, I discovered exactly how much mine were, when the hard drive on my laptop gave up the ghost. It wasn’t until I had bought a new one and tried to continue with my writing, that I realised I had no back up. Naively, I thought Scrivener was saving my manuscript to Dropbox, but it had stopped syncing back in February. Eight months of work, including 95% of a brand-new story, and edits to two others, was lost.

I almost fell into a pit of despair, but a wonderful friend offered to use his IT skills to see if he could resurrect my files and save the day. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, nothing was forthcoming, but he encouraged me to seek the help of professionals.

As a last resort, I sent my hard drive off to a data recovery service, crossing all my fingers and toes that they could find my files. To my great delight, after days of waiting, I finally got the phone call to tell me that all my manuscripts were recoverable.

Then I paid the bill.

It turns out, that my rookie mistake amounted to £756.

As you can imagine, all my files are now stored on external hard drives, as well as on my computer. A very painful lesson learnt, and a cautionary tale for anyone who uses a computer.

Not all words have a monetary value, though.

Over the past month I have been very poorly with severe back pain. I ended up in hospital twice and experienced side-effects from the painkillers I was taking. The whole experience made me feel very low in spirit. It was hard to see past it all to a brighter future, especially as it coincided with the above computer disaster, and a malfunction of my hearing aid – which doesn’t sound like the end of the world but caused the pile of my woes to teeter dangerously.

In the middle of this pretty dark period in my life, I received an ecard from my Bible study group. All of the members had written words of encouragement, bible verses, and assurances of their love and support, both in prayer and practical ways. I am not ashamed to say that it brought me to tears. It also helped me to look up, to concentrate on my blessings even in the middle of my pain, and to be thankful.

Words like this are priceless.

I have always loved words, which shouldn’t really be surprising coming from a writer. My husband learnt very early on that he couldn’t buy a greetings card simply because of a nice picture but should also take into consideration the prose inside. This minor detail came up after he gave me a birthday card that would have been more suited to an elderly relative!

One of the worst things my son did to hurt me, was rip my Mother’s Day card in half and leave it on my chair for me to find the following morning. The pain in my heart felt as if he had physically stabbed me. His words of love had been negated in a very symbolic way.

Our words have the capacity to either cause extreme damage, or to heal, encourage and comfort. We should be very careful how we use them. There are a great many wounded people out there who still carry the scars of childhood taunts, thoughtless comments from parents or teachers, betrayals by friends and lovers, or posts by vicious trolls and nameless computer warriors. I count myself among them.

But I’ve also been on the receiving end of praise for hard work, compliments on my appearance, kind words from a stranger, an honest and flattering review of my books, and beautifully emotional comments on my social media from those who felt touched in some way.

I want to live my life in such a way that the words that come out of my mouth, or typed on my keyboard, will bless, not curse; lift up, not batter down; encourage, not belittle. I want my words to bring joy.

I want them to be priceless.