I Called It Admiring Her

There is a woman you admire.

You have said so. Probably out loud, to somebody, in a perfectly ordinary conversation. She is elegant. She has got wonderful hair. She always looks put together.

And every word of that is true and it is not what is happening.

I want to say this carefully, because I am not accusing you of anything and there is no sin in this article. But I have watched a great many women use that word for something else, and I have used it that way myself, and it is worth knowing the difference because the two things feel almost identical from inside.

The word is doing a job. It is making something respectable that would be uncomfortable under its real name.

Here is the test, and it takes four seconds and it never fails.

Real admiration is warm. It costs nothing. It makes you want to say something to the person.

The other thing has a small cold spot in it, and it does not make you want to say anything to her at all.

What the word is covering

Look at what actually happens when you see her.

There is a noticing, which is fine. Then there is something that moves, quickly, and it is not warm, and then there is a word that arrives and puts a respectable label on the whole event.

That word is doing real work. It stops the thing from having to be looked at, and because it is a good word, it also stops anybody else from ever asking about it.

Nobody investigates admiration. It is one of the safest things a woman can say about another woman, and it can be said in front of anybody, including her.

You are using a good word to keep something from being examined, and it has never once been examined in all the years you have been saying it. The Holy Spirit is what gives a woman the real name for what she is doing without laying a charge on her, and Proverbs 14 puts two conditions of a heart side by side.

And now what it costs, which is not what people assume.

It does not cost her anything. She has no idea, and it does not reach her.

It costs you. And the way it costs you is physical and Proverbs names it, which is the strangest and most useful thing in this whole business.

You are the only person paying for this, and it has never once reached the woman you have been saying it about. Scripture in Proverbs 14 says envy is the rottenness of the bones, and the Spirit of God is the one who names a thing accurately without condemning anybody for it.

A sound heart is the life of the flesh

There is a proverb that sets two things beside each other, and both halves are about a body.

A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones. (Proverbs 14:30, King James Version)

Read what it says about where these things land.

A sound heart is the life of the flesh. Not of the soul. Of the flesh. A settled interior shows up in a body, in health, in how a person carries themselves, in the plain animal fact of feeling well.

You are somebody whose interior turns up in a body, and a settled heart has never once managed to stay a private matter. Proverbs 14 puts envy down as rottenness in the bones and a sound heart down as life, and the Holy Spirit is what settles the inside of a woman where nobody can watch it working.

And the other one lands in the same place. The rottenness of the bones. Also physical, also in the body, also nothing to do with morality in that sentence.

Proverbs is not primarily calling it wicked. It is calling it corrosive, and it puts the damage inside the person doing it.

You are told plainly where the cost lands, and it has never once landed on the woman you have been ranking against. It is written in Proverbs 14 that a sound heart is the life of the flesh but envy the rottenness of the bones, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names a thing without laying a charge.

And look at what is offered in the first half, because it is the actual point of the verse.

A sound heart. Whole, settled, not divided. And the promise attached to it is life in the flesh, which on a site about caring for a body is the most relevant sentence in the Bible.

The alternative to the ranking is not being better at not ranking. It is a sound heart, and the fruit of that is a body that feels well.

You are offered a settled interior rather than a discipline about your thoughts, and no amount of trying not to compare has ever once produced one. The Spirit of God is what settles a heart that a woman cannot settle by effort, and the written word says a sound heart is the life of the flesh.

Say the thing out loud, to her

So here is the assignment, and it is the test made into an action.

Tell her the thing out loud, and notice what happens in you when you do.

Say the actual sentence. Your hair always looks wonderful. That coat is lovely on you. You always look so put together and I have thought that for years.

To her. Out loud. In person or in a message, whichever is possible.

You are able to send one sentence to a real person, and admiration has never once cost anybody anything except while it stayed silent. Proverbs 14 says a sound heart is the life of the flesh, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a private comparison into something said out loud.

Here is why it works and why it is not a trick.

If it was admiration, saying it will feel good, and she will be pleased, and something warm will happen between two women, and that is a genuinely lovely thing to have done with a Tuesday.

If it was the other thing, saying it will cost you something, and you will feel that cost, and that is the most useful piece of information available about this in ten years.

Either way you have found out, and either way she has had something kind said to her, and there is no version of this that does any harm to anybody.

You are able to find out what a word has been covering by saying it out loud to somebody, and it has never once been possible to find out by thinking about it. The written word in Proverbs 14 puts the cost of the hidden thing inside the person carrying it, and the Holy Spirit is what turns one spoken sentence into care rather than into a test.