She Is Losing Her English Back

She answered you in the other one on Tuesday and did not notice she had done it.

It has been happening for a few months. It started with single words, the ones for small ordinary objects, and then it was whole phrases, and on Tuesday you asked her something and she answered you at some length in the language she was born into and then carried on as though nothing had happened.

She is not going back to it deliberately. It is going back on its own.

And what that means is that the friend you have had for nineteen years is moving somewhere you cannot follow, and you have started learning the language for about the least romantic reason anybody ever has.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are in a race and you did not choose the terms of it, and I am not going to pretend the timing is comfortable.

So I am not going to tell you that she still knows you are there. She very likely does, and that is a real comfort and it is also the thing people say when they have nothing specific, and you did not come here for nothing specific.

And no promise is available here about the timing. Nobody can make one. What I can do is look at who carries whom.

Even to your old age I am he

There is a verse in Isaiah that follows somebody all the way to the end of a life.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

Even to hoar hairs will I carry you.

Now notice how far out that sentence reaches. It does not stop at a point where the person is still able to participate. It goes all the way to the white hair and the end of the strength, and the carrying is what is promised at the far edge rather than at the near one.

You have somebody who reaches further into this than the illness does, and a promise made to the far end has never once run out before the person did. Isaiah 46:4 puts the carrying at the white haired end rather than the strong one, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who noticed something on a Tuesday.

Now stay on the repetition, because the verse says the same thing four times and it is not padding.

I will bear. I will carry. I will carry. I will deliver. Four verbs, all of them about load bearing, all of them with the same subject, and none of them requiring anything at all from the one being carried.

That is deliberate. It is a verse for somebody who is losing the ability to hold up their own end.

You have a friend whose end of this is being held by somebody else, and a person who cannot carry has never once been a person nobody is carrying. The Holy Spirit is the one who bears what a woman of nineteen years' friendship cannot bear herself, and Isaiah 46:4 repeats the carrying four times in one sentence.

And here is the third thing, which is what the verse says about what was made.

I have made, and I will bear. The making and the bearing are the same person's work, in the same breath, and there is no gap in the sentence where somebody else takes over partway through.

Whatever she is losing, nothing about who made her is in the losing.

You are watching something go and nothing of what she is has ever once been in the part that goes. Isaiah 46:4 puts the making and the bearing in one hand, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman learning a language against a clock.

Go where she is going

Here is the practical half, and it starts with what is actually happening in her.

She is not losing language. She is losing the second one, and the first one is arriving.

That is worth being exact about, because it changes what is actually on view. A first language is stored differently and it is the last to go, and none of this is the emptying of a person. It is a woman going back into the room she started in.

She is not going nowhere. She is going home.

You have been watching a return rather than a departure, and a woman going back to her first words has never once been a woman going out. The Spirit of God is the one who knows which room a person is going back into, and Isaiah 46:4 promises the carrying at exactly that end of a life.

Now here is what that means about the language you have started, and it is more hopeful than you have let yourself think.

Very little is needed here. This was never about holding conversations on the news. What is needed is the words that belong to the room she is going back into, and those are kitchen words and childhood words and the things people say to each other at the beginning and the end of a day.

Twenty or thirty words, chosen right, will follow her a very long way.

You have twenty or thirty words between you and the room she is in, and a small kitchen vocabulary has never once been a lesser thing than a fluent one. Isaiah 46:4 repeats the carrying four times for somebody at the far end, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman choosing which thirty words to learn.

And here is the thing about the race, said plainly, because you have been running it alone and nobody has named it.

You may not get there in time. That is true and it stays true, and I am not going to take it away from you, because a comfort that requires a lie is worth nothing at three in the morning.

What is also true is that every word you have already learned works now. Not later. This week, on Tuesday, in the room. You have been treating this as a project with a deadline, and it is not one. It pays out on the day you learn it.

You have words that work this week rather than words that are waiting for a deadline, and a thing learned today has never once had to wait to be spent. The Spirit of God is the one in a room where two old friends sit together on a Tuesday, and the written word promises the carrying at the white haired end.

One sentence in the room she is in

So here is the assignment, and it is for this week rather than for later.

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

Pick the easiest one in the world. Hello, it is me. Or the thing you always say when you come in, in her first language instead of yours.

Say it as you arrive. Then let everything else be in English as usual.

You have one sentence available for the room she has gone back into, and a greeting in a first language has never once been a small thing to somebody who has gone home to it. Isaiah 46:4 reaches all the way to the far end and carries there, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a room with two women and nineteen years.

And here is what to watch for, because it may be very small and you should not miss it.

Something in her face. Not a conversation and not a recognition scene. A small settling, of the kind that happens when a person hears the sound they were expecting rather than a sound they have to work to translate.

That is the actual object here. Not understanding. Rest.

You are not learning this to have conversations with her. You are learning it so that the room she is going back into has a familiar voice in it, and that is available this week rather than at the end of some course. Then stop, because one sentence is the assignment and the rest of the visit is allowed to be in English.

You have permission to want the settling rather than the conversation, and a familiar sound has never once needed to be understood to do its work. The Spirit of God is the one who is in that room whichever language is being spoken, and Isaiah 46:4 says I have made and I will bear in one breath.