They Told Me To Speak English Now

You were five, and somebody told you, and you did what you were told.

That is the whole of it and it took about four years to finish. You came home from school with a sentence you had been given, or your mother was told something at a parents evening, or somebody kind and certain said it would be better for her at school, and the house changed language around you.

And you were an obedient child. You did exactly what was asked. By nine it was gone.

Here is the part that has been sitting in you since you were about thirty.

You did it right. That is what makes it so hard to put anywhere. You were not rebellious and you did not lose it through carelessness. You obeyed a group of adults who were doing their best in a situation you cannot judge from here, and obeying is what cost you the language, and there is nobody in that story to be angry at.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

Something was taken and it was taken by people who loved you, and that is a shape of loss that most people never have to hold.

So I am not going to tell you your mother did the right thing, because neither of us was standing where she was standing, and a confident opinion about her from this distance would be worth nothing. And I am not going to tell you she did the wrong thing either, for exactly the same reason.

What I will say is that there is a verse about years, and about what happens to the ones that got eaten.

I will restore the years

There is a line in Joel about a country that lost several seasons to insects.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25, King James Version)

I will restore to you the years.

Now I want to be careful with this one, and I would rather be careful out loud than let you leave with something that will break later.

That verse is not a promise that you will end up fluent. Nothing on this site promises anybody that, and a verse pressed into service as a guarantee about an outcome is a verse being misused. What it does say, plainly, is what God is like about lost time, and that is a different thing and it is the thing you need.

You have a God who takes an interest in eaten years, and lost time has never once been a subject He declined to speak about. Joel 2:25 addresses years specifically rather than circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who lost a language between five and nine.

Now stay on the word restore, because it is doing something particular.

Restore is not the same as replace. Nobody is being handed different years. The verse addresses the actual ones, the specific eaten seasons, and does something with those rather than offering a substitute.

Which means the years between five and nine are not written off in that sentence. They are the subject of it.

You were never asked to write those four years off, and years that got eaten have never once been years God stopped considering. The Holy Spirit is the one who deals with the specific seasons rather than offering different ones, and Joel 2:25 names the eaten years as the thing in view.

And here is the third thing, which is the clause everybody hurries past.

My great army which I sent among you. The verse does not pretend the locusts were an accident and it does not explain them away. It leaves the loss fully described and fully owned, and the restoring sits directly beside it without canceling it.

You have never once been asked to call it something other than a loss, and a thing fully named has never once been a thing that cannot be restored. Joel 2:25 keeps the damage in plain view in the same sentence as the restoring, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who did exactly what she was told at five.

Obedience is not the same as forgetting

Here is the practical half, and it begins with what actually happened in your head.

You did not forget it. That is the technical truth and it matters enormously.

A language learned before five does not evaporate. It gets buried, which is a different thing, because burying leaves the thing intact underneath. People in your exact position routinely discover that they recognize far more than they can produce, that the sounds are still available to their mouth, and that words come back at a speed that startles them.

You are not starting from nothing. You are starting from under something.

You have four years of a language sitting under the surface, and a thing buried at nine has never once been the same as a thing that was never there. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has been calling herself a beginner since she was thirty, and Joel 2:25 speaks about the eaten years themselves rather than about replacements.

Now here is what that looks like in practice, and it is worth knowing before you start so that it does not frighten you.

It will come back oddly. Not in sentences. In lumps, and in the wrong order, and often with a feeling attached to it that arrives before the meaning does. A word will turn up with a kitchen attached to it, or your grandmother's hands, or a smell.

That is not a distraction from the learning. That is what recovering a buried language actually is, and the people who do it describe it the same way every time.

You have been carrying something that comes back in pieces, and a memory that arrives with a kitchen attached has never once been a less real word than one off a page. Joel 2:25 restores the actual eaten seasons rather than offering substitutes, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman when a word comes back with her grandmother's hands attached to it.

And here is the thing about your mother, said as plainly as I can manage.

She is very likely waiting. Women who made that decision in that era frequently carry it, quietly, for decades, and are not able to raise it because raising it means admitting a cost they could not have avoided at the time.

If you go to her and ask her for a word, you may find you are not the only one who has been standing on one side of a door.

You are not the only person in that family who has been silent about this, and a door with two people behind it has never once needed both of them to knock first. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a woman to ask her mother for one word, and the written word keeps the damage in full view while it speaks about restoring.

One word, and ask your mother

So here is the assignment, and the person in it is almost certainly your mother.

Learn one word your family would have used and say it to somebody in the family.

Go to her. Ask her for one word. Not a conversation about what happened, not an account of the decision, and not an apology from anybody.

One word. What did you call this. What did your mother call that.

You have one small question and one person who has been holding the answer for forty years, and one word asked for has never once been the same as an accusation. Joel 2:25 speaks about the eaten years without pretending the eating did not happen, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman sitting down with her mother.

And here is what to expect, and it may go further than you intend.

She may give you the word and stop. She may give you the word and then tell you what the parents evening was actually like. She may cry, and if she does it will not be about the word.

Whatever happens, take the word. That is the assignment and it is complete on its own, and anything else that arrives is a separate thing and does not have to be finished today. Then say the word back to her out loud, badly, and stop there.

You have permission to take one word and leave the rest of it for another day, and one word said back to your own mother has never once been a small thing in that room. The Spirit of God is the one present when a word goes back across forty years, and Joel 2:25 puts the restoring in the same sentence as the loss and never once instead of it.