She Fed Me For Four Years

A plate came over that fence about four hundred times and you have never properly thanked her.

You have said thank you. Every single time, and you meant it, and she waved it off the way she always does and went back inside.

That is not what this is about.

What you have never said is what it actually was. That those four years were the worst you have had, that there were weeks in them where the plate was the only food that arrived at that house, and that a woman you had spoken to about the weather for six years decided on her own to do that for four years without ever once mentioning it or asking you about it or making you explain anything.

You have never said any of that, and every time you have got close to it in English it has come out wrong.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

It comes out wrong in English because English is not the language she would hear it in, and I think you worked that out a while ago and have not known what to do about it.

Thank you in English is a thing she has heard four hundred times at a fence. It is worn smooth. It has been used up on the ordinary version of this, and there is no way to say it now that would carry any of the weight.

So I am not going to tell you she already knows. She may. That does not settle anything, because the thing that has been sitting in you for four years is not information, it is something that needs saying.

The hearts of the saints are refreshed

There is a short letter in the New Testament that opens by telling a man exactly what he has done, and the wording is worth staying with.

For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother. (Philemon 1:7, King James Version)

Refreshed by thee.

Now the word the King James uses there for the seat of the feelings is not one we say any more, and the modern equivalent is the heart. What the sentence says is that people's insides have been put right by something this man did, and Paul tells him so directly rather than assuming he knows.

You have somebody who has refreshed you the way that letter describes, and a thing done quietly has never once been a thing that should stay unsaid. Philemon 1:7 has a man told plainly what he has done rather than left to assume it, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who has never got the words out at a fence.

Now notice that Paul does this at all.

He did not have to. Philemon knew what he had been doing, obviously, because he had been doing it. And Paul writes it down anyway, in the opening of a letter, in specific terms, which means it is worth saying to somebody even when they already know it.

That is a permission you have not been giving yourself.

You have never once needed new information to say something to her, and a thing somebody already knows has never once been a thing not worth telling them. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves people to say what has already been noticed, and Philemon 1:7 writes it out to a man who was entirely aware of his own kitchen.

And here is the third thing, which is the last word in the verse.

Brother. He puts it at the end, after the thanks, and it is doing something the thanks alone could not do. It names what she has become through the doing rather than only what she did.

Four years of plates over a fence made that woman something in your life that neighbor does not cover.

You have somebody who became something through four years of it, and a word for what a person has become has never once been contained in a thank you. Philemon 1:7 ends on the relation rather than on the act, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows what four hundred plates made of two households.

Say it in her language because that is where it fits

Here is the practical half, and it is about why English keeps failing.

There is nothing wrong with English. There is something wrong with the particular English words available to you at that fence, and it is a specific and fixable problem.

Thank you has been used four hundred times between the two of you. It is a working phrase for a plate of food and it has done that job well, and the four years of weight will not fit inside it, because a phrase that has been used four hundred times for the small version cannot carry the large one.

You are not short of a language. You are short of a phrase that has not been worn out.

You have been trying to put four years into a phrase that is already full, and a worn sentence has never once been able to hold a new weight. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has got close to it four times and lost it every time, and Philemon 1:7 names plainly what somebody has done rather than reaching for a general word.

Now here is what her own language does that yours cannot, and it is not sentiment.

It has not been used between you. Every phrase in it is unworn. And there is one more thing, which is the real reason: the words she would use for this in her own language carry the particular weight her family gives them, and when she hears one of those from you she will hear it the way she heard it as a child rather than the way she hears English at a fence.

That is not a warmer version of thank you. It is a different instrument.

You have an instrument available that has never once been used between the two of you, and an unworn phrase has never once carried the same as a smooth one. Philemon 1:7 chooses specific words rather than general ones, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows which phrase a woman heard in her own mother's kitchen.

And here is the thing about waiting, said plainly.

Four years is already a long time and it has not got easier. It has got harder, because the longer a thing like this sits the more of a speech it has become in your head, and a speech is a much higher bar than a sentence.

What is sitting in you now is about four minutes long. It started out as about eight words.

You have been holding something that grows a little every season, and a thing left unsaid has never once got easier to say by waiting. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a woman to the fence with eight words instead of four minutes, and the written word puts the telling in the opening line rather than saving it.

Eight words at the fence

So here is the assignment, and it is the short version rather than the speech.

Say one prepared sentence to that person, and let the rest of it be in English.

Eight words in her language. Not four minutes and not the whole account. Find out how somebody in her family would say thank you for something that mattered, which is not the same phrase as the everyday one, and learn that.

Then say it at the fence, on an ordinary day, when she hands something over or when you are both out there.

You have eight words rather than a speech, and a short true sentence has never once carried less than a long prepared one. Philemon 1:7 says what a man has done in a single line and then names what he is, and the Holy Spirit is the one at a fence with two women and a plate.

And here is what to do when she waves it off, because she will.

Let her. Do not say it again, do not explain what you meant, and do not follow it with the four minutes.

She has waved off four hundred thank yous and she will wave this one off too, and that is what she does with her hands and it is not what happens inside her. The words in her own language will still have landed, and you will not see where, and you do not need to.

Then stop and go into English about the weather, because eight words is the assignment and nothing else is owed by either of you.

You have permission to be waved off and let it stand, and a thing that got waved away at a fence has never once failed to land. The Spirit of God is the one in a garden when eight words go over a fence, and Philemon 1:7 ends on what somebody has become rather than on what she did.