Mom! Don't read this post!

I have a friend named Meredith Munro. Besides being stunning, she has the heart of a quilt – all warm, safe, covering and colorful. Whenever I have the rare chance to be with her, I like it.

Meredith introduced me to a website called, TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS, and I highly recommend that you click and read too. It is the true story of a young, self-mutilating woman, who was denied rehab, and the group of people that took her in and lived and rescued and looked like the real Church. When they found her, she had used a razor to carve “F**K UP” across her left forearm.

I have another friend who has spent most of his adult life in and out of jail and when he was younger, he was confined in the Graterford Penitentiary, Pennsylvania’s largest maximum security prison. While there, he had “F**K OFF” tattooed onto his knuckles, and from the stories I’ve heard about Graterford, I can see why.

I remember the day that Noah got off the bus and asked me what, “f**k” meant. He was in first grade. Now, before all the home schoolers start thinking I’ve proved their point, in some ways I have welcomed these moments with my children. I say, “The world is what it is right now, but what will we be in the midst of it and how will our lives instigate change?”

I told Noah that the word itself, just a combination of four letters, is not inherently bad. There really is no such thing as a bad word. From my perspective, it is the intent behind a word, the heart behind it, that is most disturbing. I guess, then, it should surprise no one that the word ended up on one of Noah’s school papers that year, on a list of words that rhymed with duck. Yeah, suck was there, too.

The girl who cut herself had self-loathing and addiction behind her word. My friend in prison had fear behind his. The crazy thing for me is that so many people react strongly to the use of four letter words, forgetting they are simply a combination of letters that can tell us so much about someone’s hurting, angry, broken heart.

LOVE is a four letter word, too. It can be said and said and said (and sung and preached and studied and recited) with no heart behind it at all, but no one seems to be getting upset about it. I’m not sure which is worse.

No, that’s b******t. I’m perfectly sure which is worse.