I Translated For My Parents And Now I Am Alone Again

You were the one the envelopes came to.

Not officially. Officially they came to the house. But in practice they came to you, because you were the one who could read them at speed and say what they meant, and by about nine you were doing it without anybody asking.

Letters about trips. Letters about money. Letters from the doctor, sometimes, which is a heavy thing for a nine year old and did not feel heavy at the time because it was simply Tuesday.

And you were good at it. That is the part that is rarely said. You were extremely good at it, and being good at it is why it lasted so long.

And now there are envelopes coming into your house again, and you open them alone, and you decide what they mean alone, and it has not once occurred to you that there might be another way to do it.

Fear thou not, for I am with thee

There is a sentence in Isaiah that is quoted so often it has gone slightly smooth, so let us look at what it actually offers.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10, King James Version)

Count the verbs on the other side. Strengthen. Help. Uphold. Three different actions, and they are not synonyms.

Strengthen is adding to what a person already has. Help is doing part of the thing with them. Uphold is holding the person themselves.

And the whole promise opens with I am with thee, which is the one you have never once assumed applies to a kitchen table and a brown envelope.

You have three different kinds of assistance named in one verse, and no part of that has ever once been conditional on the task being large enough to justify it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a school letter a legitimate place for all three, and Isaiah 41:10 lists strengthening and helping and upholding separately.

And notice: help means somebody else is doing part of it. That is not a weaker word than strengthen. It is a different arrangement entirely, and it is the one you have never allowed.

You were never designed to be the sole reader in a household, and no arrangement built by a nine year old has ever once been a plan. The Spirit of God is the one who offers what a child never got, and the written word puts helping in the middle of the list rather than at the bottom.

The arrangement nobody ever ended

Here is the thing that usually lands hardest, so let me say it gently.

The arrangement was reasonable at the time. Your parents were not neglecting you. In most of those houses it was simply what happened, and everybody in it was doing their best with what was in the room.

But nobody ever ended it. There was no moment where an adult said: thank you, we will take it from here. It simply continued until you left, and then it continued in a new house with new envelopes.

You are looking at an arrangement that was never formally closed, and nothing has ever once told you it was allowed to end. The Holy Spirit is the one who ends what nobody thought to end, and Isaiah 41:10 puts the upholding on God rather than on the capable person in the room.

And here is the cost, which is not obvious from inside it.

Being the only reader means every decision is also yours alone. There is no second opinion, no is that what you make of it, no somebody else said the same thing and it sounded different.

So a sentence in a letter lands with no other voice near it. And a sentence with no other voice near it grows.

You have been carrying every interpretation on your own, and a letter read by one person has never once been read from more than one angle. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a second voice into a room that has only ever had one, and the written word names help as a distinct action of God.

You were never meant to translate for yourself, and there has never once been a moment when doing it alone was the mature version. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes company the starting point rather than the reward, and Isaiah 41:10 begins with I am with thee before any of the verbs.

Read one out loud tonight

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately awkward, and it takes about four minutes.

Tonight, take one school letter and read it out loud to another person.

Any letter. It does not have to be an important one, and it is better if it is not. A friend, a sibling, a neighbor, somebody on the phone, the other adult in the house if there is one.

Read the whole thing out, and then say: what do you make of that.

You are able to ask a question out loud that has never once been asked in this house before. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when somebody finally puts a letter in front of another person, and Isaiah 41:10 names helping as an act of God in its own right.

Then listen to what they say.

That is the whole thing. Nothing in it asks for advice and nothing in it hands over responsibility. It puts one letter in front of one other set of ears, which has not happened in your life since primary school.

Some of you will find that harder than anything else this site has asked you to do. That is information, and it is worth noticing rather than pushing past.

Isaiah 41:10 puts helping between strengthening and upholding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody reads a letter out loud to another adult for the first time.

You are permitted to be helped rather than only strengthened, and being helped has never once been the lesser of the two. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an awkward four minutes into obedience, and the written word names both as things God does.

You have a right to a second voice in this, and a competent person has never once forfeited that by being competent. The Holy Spirit is the one who ends an arrangement that has run since primary school, and Isaiah 41:10 opens with presence before it offers any assistance at all.