Words can wound us forever. They can hurt our feelings. They can discourage us beyond the point of being able to snap out of it. And as a little girl, whenever I was teased or called some bad name by some kid in my class, I always went crying home. And I always said those words, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." But they did. They really did. The power of words is such that words can wound our souls, but other words can heal our spirits, sort of from the inside out instead of the other way.

I'd like to share with you some special words which heal our spirits. We have special words within our memories. My memories are varied and legion practically, but the memories that I have of my mother, she died in the 1960's. She was not 60 years old yet, and I was in my 30's and the very last letter that she wrote me before she died said at the very end, "Keep faith with God regardless and always." Special words. They're still with me. I can still hear them in my head. And then, just a few days before she died, I realized that we had started a tradition where words were very important. If I went down to the cafeteria while I was waiting with her those seven weeks while she took her time in dying, if I went to the cafeteria, if I went out of her room for any reason, we had this little ritual. I would go out and step one step out of the door, and I would hear her say, "Joyce-Honey." She always called me "Joyce-Honey." It's a hyphenated name. And I would stop, I wouldn't go back in, but I'd say, "Yes, mother." And she'd say, "You are loved." I can still remember the inflection in her voice. "Da-da-da-a"C that kind of thing. Special, special words.

What are some special words in your memories? What can you remember? Not the bad ones, but the good ones that healed your soul, that comforts you now, so many years after they were spoken or after they were written. We have those memories, special words.

We also have special words in everyday words, phrases between you and I. Listen to some of them: I am married to a "cherished" right now and every morning he wakes me up by saying, "I love you," and then he goes on this long spiel about how wonderful I am. Now I know I'm not wonderful. I know I'm not to that extent, but my heart thrives on it. My soul is enriched in it. The words, "I love you" are special.

The words from a doctor or from somebody who is there, the words: "It's a girl. It's a boy." Wonderful, wonderful words. Wonderful words of just ordinary words between us, but special words. We never forget them.

My daughter, when she was 5 years old, caught me at supper time while I was making gravy and anybody who cooks knows that when you make gravy you worry about it because you can't leave it or it gets lumpy. And she came racing in, 5 years old, and she said, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! Come see! Come see the orange sun!" I remember the feeling, although she's married with her own children now. I remember that feeling.

Just a simple phrase. The simple phrase from an officer of the law when you're speeding down some road, and he stops you. The special words of healing that he says to you after he tells you how fast you were going. He says now, "I'm not going to give you a ticket. This is a warning." Those are very special words.

Or the doctor. When a doctor looks you in the face, and he says deeply from his heart, "I've got good news for you. The tests are great. They're clear. They're normal." Or when a doctor says to you, "The tumor you have is not malignant." Very, very special words. Very special words. Or in my case, I have breast cancer but these past few months I've had some problems with a fibrillating, rapid-beat heart, and all that. And we tried two medicines and the first one didn't work at all, and these episodes were lasting for five and six hours, and finally they got the right medication. When we tried it out—I went to the hospital to get it— but when we tried it out, then I got the words from my doctor. "The medication is working." And then he looked at me and said, "Do you think the medication is working?" And I said, "Yes, the medication is working." How special, how special those words are.

Then the other thing from our friends or maybe our family or maybe a spouse or maybe from our children, can there be any more special words to us than the special words of "I care"? "I'm on your side," or "Daily I'm praying for you"? Can there be any more special words? I don't think so.

Besides the special words of our memory, besides the special words of ordinary phrases, there are the special words that we find all around us. In the hymns for instance, in old hymns, in new hymns. Just last Sunday our choir—huge choir—about 200 voices sang the song, And it's new. "In my moments of fear through every pain, every tear, there's a God who's been faithful to me. When my strength was gone, there's a God who is faithful to me." Then there are old hymns like the hymn, you're going to be hearing it pretty soon, but like the hymn, "It's Well with My Soul." The author was a successful Chicago businessman. He sent his wife and four children on a ship, the Villa LeHarve, to Europe for a visit. On the way, they collided with a sailing vessel, and the mother alone was rescued. And when she cabled back to Chicago here, she said, "Saved alone." It was after the death of his four children and the heartache of that, that he wrote the words, "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say, 'It is well, it is well with my soul.'" Special words. Yes, born out of hurt and tragedy, but special words. It is well with my soul.

Perhaps the most special words which heal our spirits and warms our souls are the words between the Lord and us. When I'm tired, words like "Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Words when we're lonely. I took into surgery with breast cancer, I took into surgery this verse from Joshua, very special words. "As I was with Moses," God says, "as I will be with you." Psalms when you're surprised by pain. And who of us hasn't been surprised by pain? Where Psalms say, "God is our refuge, our strength, and our ever present help in trouble." When we're waiting and so many times we are in God's waiting room, the Psalms says, "Be still and know that I am God." And the other one, "Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart." I guess my favorite, favorite one of the whole Bible is this one. You've heard it a million times, pretend you've never heard it before. Pretend that you're hearing it for the first time. It goes like this. "Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake and, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou annointeth my head with oil. My cup runneth over, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall live in the house of the Lord forever." Special words.

Lydia Talbot: Joyce, your earlier message on special words, there is music in your words, and I suspect because you are a musician, that that has to be part of the process for healing that you talk about. Tell us about that.

Joyce Landorf Heatherley: Well, we have a choice in life. Everybody suffers at one time or another. If you haven't suffered yesterday, you'll probably suffer next Tuesday or something like that. We have hurts. We have physical problems. We have emotional hurts that sometimes never go away. Maybe a teacher in your sixth grade said to you, "You really are stupid." And you can't remember anything that anybody said after that. You will always remember what she said. So, granted, this is not a perfect world. And this is a world with a lot of hurts in it. We have the choice of deciding, okay, are we going to accept it and move on or try to move on and try to help ourselves heal? Or are we going to stay within the pain itself? I believe that as a child of God and any child of God, we have this enormous chance to take whatever suffering we've had and make it work. Become a wounded healer like Henri Nouwen talks about in his book. To become this person who is already hurt and then reaches out to somebody else who is hurting. It is the best way to get out of grief, it's the best way to go on with your life.

Talbot: And Joyce, you are doing that everyday, In your own life now you are struggling with breast cancer as you conveyed. And you say that you look at people differently now. You look in their eyes differently. What is that about?

Heatherley: Well, everyday is precious. I mean, if you don't know when cancer's coming back, it may come back, it may not. The chemotherapy may have worked. The radiation may have worked. But if it doesn't, you have to look at life terribly, terribly different. And things don't make me quite as angry as they used to. You get a more relaxed thing about it. There's a scripture in Psalms, or Proverbs, I guess it is, that says, "We may make our daily plans, but the final outcome is in God's hands."

Talbot: I suspect that some of your incredible approach to this excruciating pain that you're struggling with, that assurance, that confidence, that keeping faith, comes from your own mother.

Heatherley: Yes it does.

Talbot: Talk about her some more.

Heatherley: Well, she was my very best friend, and I deal in a lot of audiences with women who are not best friends with their mother. And I always feel sad for them because they couldn't have known the relationship that I had with mine. She was just wonderful. But she was only fifty-seven when she died. My sister is twenty years younger than I am, and she was only fourteen when my mother died, so we felt a great, great loss because this was an encourager. This was a balcony person woman. This was my dearest confidant, my mentor. She taught me to sing when I was about three, or taught me choruses when I was about three, and taught me piano when I was about , taught me how to read when I was about five or six and read to me until I was twelve. So when this person is removed out of your life, you're just completely at loose ends. So I had to grab on to everything that she left me that wasn't tangible. She didn't leave me any houses or lands, you know, but she did leave me with this vast inheritance, this store house.

Talbot: Which is the title of your book, The Inheritance.

Heatherley: Well, I couldn't not write about it because so often we think that an inheritance is money or lands or jewelry or something like that. What my mother left me was none of those things. It was this "keep faith with God regardless and always" and "Joyce-Honey you are loved."

Talbot: What was her name?

Heatherley: Her name was Marion Uzon Miller.

Talbot: What was the cause of her death?

Heatherley: Breast cancer.

Talbot: Your daughter now, I suspect...

Heatherley: Is struggling.

Talbot: Yes, of course!

Heatherley: My sister who has four girls, we all know we are in the high risk, but we are in God's hands and we need to do everything we can to help it, to prevent it, to have early detection, to have those mammograms, you know, and to go with whatever's available. But we also need to know that our lives are in His hands. And that seems to give the peace that you think you see in me. Underneath it all I'm scared to death. I don't want to suffer like my mother did because she did suffer terribly but I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of that process up to it. When I die, I know where I'm going, and it will be joyous. I'll be able to see her, and I'll be able to just look in the face of God.

Talbot: What an extraordinary gift in the form of your loving husband at your side! And you met him through a publishing. You are a recording artist...

Heatherley: I've known him just for years and years.

Talbot: and what a wonderful team you are in your professional career as well.

Heatherley: Yes, he's my "cherisher." He's God's lovely gift to me.

Talbot: I want to take you back now when you were in school. Of course now you have a doctorate in humanities. You are an acclaimed recording artist, and so on. But let's go back. How was it that music became so central in your life?

Heatherley: It was, always. I do not remember when it wasn't, and I think it started out because my father played the violin and sang—and he also played piano—but he played the violin and sang over my mother when she was pregnant with me. In her diary she said, "I know I'm going to have a little girl, and I know she's going to sing, and I'll name her Joyce" and that was the way it did. I grew up hearing music all the time.

Talbot: So majoring in music, later in school lead. You performed at the piano and sang.

Heatherley: I'd play for myself and sing. It's been a wonderful thing. When I'm really sick though I have to tell musicians out there "You can't sing. You have to have somebody else sing for you." And I was blessed to have a husband who sings for me, children who sing for me in their own way, but music is a part.

Talbot: The connection between music and spirituality.

Heatherley: I can't separate them. I just can't separate them.

Talbot: For you as you were growing up as a child, what form did your spiritual life take? Was it Sunday school or church?

Heatherley: It was in my father's church because my father was a minister. And I remember a first conversion when I was seven and living in Owen Sound, Canada. And we were coming home from church, and I had said that night, "Jesus come into my heart." I knew the language and the snow was falling, and we walked home to our little tiny place in Owen Sound and I looked at the snow. It was sparkling. I was seven, and I said to my mother, "My heart looks just like that. It's sparkling just like that." And then when I was twenty-five, I had what could be called a second conversion and that was when I chose to deliberately follow Christ.

Talbot: Joyce, a sparkling heart, what greater gift to give to all of us? Thanks so much.