Watch Your Mouth!

 

In the effort to gently sway my family to watch their language I have started to ask them to "please watch your mouth."  In response, they stick their lips out, cross their eyes, and repeat the foul language in a muddled way, then laugh and say they were "watching their mouth."  While they make a joke of it, I think they are starting to "get it," already.  

A good sign is that they are holding me accountable.  The other day, something annoyed me in the cupboard.  Something was in the way and I had to climb on a stool to sort it out.  I muttered an alteration of a swear word, an Old English pronunciation of a certain more mild swear word, and my daughter heard.  She called me out on it, and she was exactly right.  Since then I've been catching myself.  It's become such a habit of conversation and a self-entitled expression of anger that it slips out so easily. 

While it would take a miracle of conversion to eliminate foul language from my home (and ultimately foul thought and foul spirits because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks) anything reduction is an improvement.  Any move towards God and the goodness of right living is positive.  All I can do is pray, gently correct, and lead by example...and allow for correction, to repent, apologize, acknowledge my own wrong-doing, and express my intentions and goals in the matter.