The Family Word for Being Sick

Every article on this site opens the same way and this one does too. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If somebody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before you read any further about words.

Now. Your family has a word for it.

Every family does. It might be a word for being unwell that is not the ordinary word. A bit off. A bit under. Having a turn. Being poorly, said in a particular voice that makes it smaller than it is. Or the opposite, in some houses: a word that makes everything enormous.

And the word is not neutral. That is the thing I want to say. A word carries an instruction about how seriously to take the thing, and everybody in that family learned the instruction along with the word, and nobody ever noticed that was happening.

So when somebody in your house says it, a decision has already been made about how much attention this deserves, and it was made by a person who died in nineteen eighty something.

The tongue is described as carrying that much weight

There is a proverb about words that is usually quoted about gossip, and it is much bigger than that.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. (Proverbs 18:21, King James Version)

Death and life. Not encouragement and discouragement. Not kindness and rudeness. The proverb reaches for the largest possible pair of words to describe what language does.

And the second half is the practical part. They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof, which means the people who go on using a word will live inside whatever it produces.

You are living inside a word that somebody chose for you. Proverbs 18:21 puts the reach of language at the highest setting available and does not soften it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody see what a family word has actually been doing.

I am not being dramatic and I am not saying a word is magic. What I am saying is that language sets expectations, expectations set responses, and responses decide whether somebody gets seen or not.

You have been handed a vocabulary that has never once been examined by anybody in that line. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a person hear a familiar word as if it were new, and it is written that the fruit of it gets eaten by the ones who go on loving the word.

What the small word is costing

Let me say the practical half, because on this site the word problem has a consequence.

In most families the private word makes things smaller. That is the direction it usually runs, because the families that produce these words were usually families that could not afford for things to be large.

And a smaller word produces a smaller response. Somebody says the word, everybody hears the instruction, and nobody rings anybody. And the person using it about themselves has already, in the act of saying it, ruled out being taken seriously.

You are describing your own situation in a word that comes with its own verdict attached. Proverbs 18:21 makes the tongue the place where the weight sits rather than the circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody to say the plain thing instead of the family thing.

And the fix is small and immediate. Say what is actually happening instead. Not the word. The description.

You were never obliged to use the family word, and dropping it has never once been a betrayal of anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who gives somebody plain language in a house that has never used it, and what is written puts death and life in the power of the tongue without exempting anybody's grandmother.

The plain routing, and it needs plain words

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on an article about language it is directly connected.

If somebody in that house is in trouble right now, that is 911, and when you ring, describe what is happening in plain words rather than in the family one. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And if anybody is unwell, ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, and use ordinary language when you do.

You are giving somebody the accurate version, and the accurate version has never once been an exaggeration. Proverbs 18:21 treats words as carrying real weight rather than as decoration, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with somebody describing a thing plainly to a stranger.

This is the one place where the family word does real harm. A clinician works from what they are told, and if the description arrives pre shrunk, the response arrives pre shrunk too.

You have plain words available and they have never once been unavailable to anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who steadies somebody using ordinary language for the first time, and what is written makes the tongue the place where death and life are held.