Silence Is Golden
One day following the F-5 child tornado that hit the toy room of our home, I was fussing about the mess and having to clean it up when from down our hall a north Georgia wind calmly blew across the Tennessee line into the room. It was Big Nanny Spurgeon, superior nanny as we lovingly referred to her. She stood quietly in the doorway for a few moments, listening to my ranting and raving, and with her southern twang she said: "You know you should not be picking up the mess in this room, get those children to do it. On judgment day do you think you will be allowed to stand before God and answer for them? How will they ever learn if you do everything for them? They must answer for what they have done themselves, and learn that when you play you pay. Cleaning this room is their job not yours. They must learn to control themselves just as you must learn to control your temper, for in one flash of temper all the good you have worked toward is gone, then you must work twice as hard to redeem yourself." She went on to say: "One day you will pick this room up for the last time, one day you will walk by this room and it will be perfectly clean every day, and then on that day you will find yourself all alone wondering where it all went and thinking how fast it all slipped by." I stood in front of her like the child I was over 40 years ago. I was speechless and I am never without words, searching for a rebuttal like an attorney pleading a case, but nothing came. All I could do was soak in what she had said and think to myself that again in my life she had spoke the truth with love, and was correct. I kept thinking, thinking about what all she had seen in life, the jobs she and pop had worked, the prayers they had prayed, the homes they lived in, the firewood she and pop had brought in to keep those homes warm and the nine children they raised, without a toy room. It was then I realized that silence really is golden.
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