She Is Just Taking A Year

It has got into your own mouth now.

That is the development since about August, and it is why this is worth writing about. For a while it was other people. Your aunt said it first, probably, and then it turned up in three or four other conversations, and it was never unkind and it was always the same word.

She is just taking a year.

And somewhere in the autumn you started saying it. Somebody asked, and out came: I am just taking a year. And you heard it as it left, and it was too late, and the conversation moved on.

You have said it about four times this week.

Here is the thing about that particular word, and it is worth being precise, because it looks like nothing.

Just is a diminisher. Its entire function in that sentence is to make what follows it smaller. It has no other job. And every time it goes in front of something, the thing behind it is quietly reduced, and after about six months of that the reduction stops being a word and starts being a belief.

Increased in wisdom and stature

There is one sentence in Luke that covers about eighteen years of a life, and it is worth stopping on for that reason alone.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. (Luke 2:52, King James Version)

That is the entire account of most of a life.

There is a chapter about the birth, and there is a scene at twelve, and then there is that one sentence, and then he is thirty. Eighteen years, roughly, in a single line, and the line contains no achievements at all.

What it contains is increase.

You are in a stretch that increases without producing anything to report, and a year that generates no account of itself has never once been a year in which nothing happened. Luke 2:52 covers eighteen years in one line and records growth rather than events, and the Holy Spirit is the one on a street with somebody who has said the word four times this week.

And look at what increased. Wisdom. Stature. Favor with God and with people.

Not one of those is an achievement. They are all conditions of a person, accumulated slowly, in a workshop, in a small town, across years in which nothing was recorded because nothing needed recording.

Nobody would have been able to describe those years without the word just.

You are in the kind of stretch that Scripture summarizes rather than narrates, and years that summarize badly have never once been years that counted for less. The written word gives most of a life one sentence and calls it increase, and the Spirit of God is the one who values a stretch that produces no headlines.

The word is doing the work

Now the practical part, and it is about the mouth rather than about anybody else's opinion.

Somebody else's frame has been adopted, and it is now being maintained on their behalf.

That is what has happened since the autumn. The word came from outside, it was picked up, and now it is being supplied by the person it is about, in every conversation, unprompted.

Which means that nobody has to diminish this year anymore. It is being done in advance, four times a week, at no cost to anybody else.

You are able to stop doing somebody else's work for them, and a word supplied in advance has never once protected anybody from what they were afraid of. The Holy Spirit is the one who stops a borrowed word in a person's own mouth, and Luke 2:52 summarizes an entire adolescence as increase and reduces not one hour of it.

You are maintaining a frame that somebody else built, and a word picked up from an aunt has never once become true by being repeated in your own voice. Luke 2:52 summarizes without diminishing anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person whose word is coming out of their mouth.

And here is the second half, which is the thing that will keep working on you if nothing changes.

You will start planning like a person in a just.

That is how it works. A year described as small gets treated as small: less is attempted in it, less is expected of it, and by the following August there will be genuine evidence that it was a minor year, and the evidence will have been produced by the description.

Taking a year is not a verdict on anybody.

You are able to stop a description from manufacturing its own proof, and a small word repeated for six months has never once been a neutral thing to say about your own life. Luke 2:52 records increase across years nobody wrote about, and the Spirit of God is the one who interrupts a word before it finishes making itself true.

Say it without the word

So here is the thing to do, and it is exactly one word long.

Say what this year holds, out loud, to the next person who asks, and leave the word just out of it.

I am taking a year. I am working at the moment. I am doing this until next September.

You are able to say the same sentence with the diminisher removed, and one word taken out of a description has never once been too small a change to matter. The Holy Spirit is the one standing beside somebody who leaves one word out for the first time since the autumn, and it is written in Luke 2:52 that eighteen years were summarized as increase.

And it will be harder than it sounds, for a specific reason.

The word is doing protective work. It gets in ahead of any possible reaction, and it signals that you already know this is not much, which prevents anybody from having to think it. Dropping it means standing there without the shield, for about two seconds, while somebody forms whatever view they form.

Those two seconds are the entire price, and they are payable once per conversation, and they are considerably cheaper than six months of instructing yourself.

You are able to stand for two seconds with no shield in front of a sentence, and a plain description of a real year has never once needed a small word to protect it. Scripture gives an entire adolescence one line and reduces none of it, and the same Spirit who summarized without diminishing is beside you when the word stays out.