I Told Everybody Last Time

Nobody knows you are doing this. That is deliberate and it took some arranging.

Last time you told everybody. You announced it at a table with eleven people at it, you told the women at church, you told your mother, and for about five weeks people asked you how it was going and you had something to tell them.

And then it stopped, and for the next four months people kept asking, and you said something light and moved the conversation, and eventually they stopped asking, which was worse.

So this time there is nobody. The book lives in a drawer. You do it when the house is empty. Your husband does not know and nor does anybody at church, and it has been eleven weeks.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

The secrecy is the most reasonable thing in this whole story, and it is also the reason this one will be harder than the last one.

So I am not going to tell you that you should not care what people think. That is one of the more useless sentences in circulation and it has never once helped anybody, including the people who say it.

Let me show you a verse about faces.

Their faces were not ashamed

There is a line in Psalm thirty four with a direction in it, and the direction is doing the work.

They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. (Psalm 34:5, King James Version)

They looked unto him.

Now notice where the eyes are pointed in that sentence, because the whole mechanism is there. Not at the people around them. Not inward at themselves. The verse has them looking at one place, and the face changes as a result of where they were looking rather than as a result of anything they decided about their face.

You have been managing a face instead of pointing it somewhere, and a face has never once been changed by being worked on directly. Psalm 34:5 fixes the eyes on one place and lets the face follow, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman doing this in an empty house.

Now stay on the word lightened, because it is a physical word.

Lightened means brightened. It is a description of what happens to a face when it turns toward light, which is not a decision the face makes. The verse is describing something that happens to a person rather than something a person achieves.

You were never being asked to produce a different expression, and a lightened face has never once been something anybody manufactured. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the lightening in a woman who has been managing hers for four months, and Psalm 34:5 has it happen as a result rather than as an effort.

And here is the third thing, which is the phrase at the end and the one you came for.

Their faces were not ashamed. It does not say they were not seen. It does not say nobody was watching, and there is no suggestion anywhere in the psalm that they arranged privacy first.

The ashamed is removed. The being seen is not.

You have never once been offered a version of this where nobody is looking, and the shame has never once been removed by the hiding. Psalm 34:5 takes away the ashamed without taking away the audience, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman whose book lives in a drawer.

The drawer is doing something you did not intend

Here is the practical half, and it is about what the secrecy is actually costing.

Every witness has been removed, and a witness is not only somebody who can watch a thing fail.

Think about what those eleven weeks have been missing. Nobody has asked you how it is going. Nobody has said a word in that language at you for fun. Nobody has been mildly impressed, nobody has offered to practice, nobody has told you that their cousin speaks it and would love to talk to you.

You did not just remove the risk. You removed the whole supply.

You have been working in a room with the door shut on the help as well as the watching, and a hidden thing has never once been able to receive anything. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman doing this in an empty house, and Psalm 34:5 takes the shame off a face without emptying the room.

Now here is the second cost, and it is the one that will end this in about March.

There is nothing to come back to. Last time, the announcement was also an anchor. When you slipped for a week, somebody asked, and the asking pulled you back, and that is actually why it lasted five weeks rather than two.

This time a slipped week will be entirely silent. Nothing will ask. And a silent slip becomes a silent month without anything interrupting it.

You have removed the one thing that interrupts a quiet week, and a slip nobody notices has never once been easier to recover from. Psalm 34:5 keeps the faces in view while it removes the ashamed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a woman to let one person know.

And here is the thing about last time, said plainly and with no scolding in it.

The announcement was not the mistake. Telling eleven people was fine. What made those four months so bad was the size of the claim, not the number of hearers.

You did not tell them you were learning. You told them you were going to be able to speak it, and that is a promise with a finish line on it, and a promise is what turned every later question into an audit.

You were never obliged to promise anybody an outcome, and telling somebody what you are doing has never once been the same as telling them where it ends. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman remembering a table with eleven people at it, and the written word turns a face toward something rather than toward a result.

Tell one person what you are doing

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves.

Open it once today without going back to the beginning of anything.

Ten words, from wherever it opens. Same as the last eleven weeks.

And then tell one person. One. Not the table and not the church. Your husband, or one friend, whichever is easier.

You have one person to tell and eleven weeks that nobody knows about, and telling one person has never once been the same as making an announcement. Psalm 34:5 removes the ashamed and leaves the faces in the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman saying it out loud to one person tonight.

And here is exactly what to tell them, because the wording is the whole difference between this time and last time.

Describe the activity, not the destination. I am learning ten words a day. That is the sentence.

Not I am learning the language. Not I want to be able to talk to her by Christmas. Ten words a day is a description of an activity, and an activity cannot be failed at, and nobody can audit a thing that has no finish line in it. Then stop, because one person is the assignment and nobody else needs to be told anything.

You have a sentence that cannot be audited afterward, and a description of what you are doing has never once been a promise about where it ends. The Spirit of God is the one in the room when a woman tells one person, and Psalm 34:5 takes the shame off the face and never once takes away the looking.