I Was The Quick One Until I Was Not

It was your identity before you had any say in it.

She is quick. He picks things up fast. You should see how quickly she gets through it. Adults said it in front of you, pleased, and you learned very early that it was the thing about you that pleased them.

And then, somewhere around thirteen or fifteen or at university, something arrived that did not yield to quickness.

And you did not simply find it hard. You came apart, quietly, in a way that looked from outside like losing interest. You dropped the subject. You decided it was boring. You told a story about a teacher you did not like.

Because the alternative was finding out that the quick one was not quick at this, and the quick one was the whole of what you were.

And now you are sitting at a table with your own child saying: you got that so fast. Well done, that was quick.

When I was a child, I spake as a child

There is a sentence in Corinthians about growing up that is usually read at weddings and is far more useful than that.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11, King James Version)

Notice what is being described. Not a fault being corrected. A stage being left behind because a different stage arrived.

Speaking, understanding, thinking. Three whole categories, all of which were appropriate at the time and all of which had to change.

And putting away is a deliberate act. Somebody does it. It does not happen automatically when a birthday passes.

You have been handed a stage rather than a failure, and scripture has never once described leaving one behind as coming apart. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets an adult reread their own fifteenth year without shame in it, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 puts the change in the ordinary passage from one stage to the next.

And here is what that gives you about the thing that happened to you.

Being quick was appropriate to a stage. It is genuinely how young minds handle early material, and it works, right up until the material changes shape. What you needed at that point was not more speed. It was a different set of tools, and nobody had ever told you those existed.

You were never a person who lost something, and no stage has ever once been the whole of a person. The Spirit of God is the one who reframes a memory that has been filed wrongly for twenty years, and the written word treats the transition as expected rather than as a collapse.

What the compliment actually teaches

So here is the part that matters for tonight, and it is not about you any more.

When a child is praised for speed, they learn that speed is the evidence of the thing being praised. And the thing being praised, in their understanding, is not what they did. It is what they are.

So the first time something is slow, they have not merely hit a hard question. They have hit evidence against themselves.

And the cheapest way to make that evidence go away is to stop. Not because they gave up, but because stopping preserves the identity and continuing puts it at risk.

You are able to see exactly what a compliment was teaching, and no adult has ever once said that sentence intending any of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent the machinery inside a kind word, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 names a stage that had to be put away deliberately.

And the same is true of the opposite praise, which is where this gets useful.

Praise the trying and you have praised a thing that is available on a hard night. Effort does not run out when the material gets difficult. It is the only currency that keeps working precisely when speed stops.

You have something to praise that has never once become unavailable at the exact moment it was needed. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the right sentence in a parent's mouth at a table, and the written word describes a passage into a new set of tools rather than a loss of the old ones.

You were never given the sentence that would have held at fifteen, and there has never once been a rule that says you cannot hand it on anyway. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody give what they did not receive, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 has the man put away the childish thing himself.

One sentence about the effort

So here is the thing to do tonight, and it is one sentence and it is harder than it sounds.

Say out loud one thing your child did that took effort. And do not mention the result.

That second half is the whole exercise, because it is where all of us fail. You stuck with that even though it was annoying, and you got it right. The last four words undo the first nine.

You have been given a sentence that is short on purpose, and a compliment has never once needed a landing to be a real one. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the discipline of stopping, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 has the old set of tools put down deliberately rather than trailed along behind.

Say: you stayed with that one for a long time. Then stop talking.

Or: you went back and checked it. Then stop.

Or: you did not give up when it went wrong the first time. Then stop.

No landing. No well done. No and you got there in the end, because in the end is a result and the whole sentence collapses into it.

You have the harder half of this in your own mouth tonight, and it has never once been the finding of the words that was difficult. The Spirit of God is the one who closes a parent's mouth four words early, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 describes a deliberate laying down rather than a drifting away.

1 Corinthians 13:11 names a deliberate putting away of one set of tools for another, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a parent stops a sentence early on purpose.

You are permitted to end a compliment before it reaches the answer, and a sentence that stops early has never once been half a sentence. The Spirit of God is the one who gives an adult the discipline of the shorter sentence, and the written word describes the change of stage as something a person performs.

You have the exact words available tonight, and they have never once required the work to have gone well. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary evening the place it gets said, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 treats the passage between stages as expected.