I.D.I.O.T. Redeemed 💝

🕯️ It's Sunday morning and the house is still. The early light is spilling softly across the table, and my heart keeps drifting back to a word.

It's such a small word, only five letters long, yet I've been reminded this week how much weight a small word can carry when it's spoken over a child. Words like that don't simply pass through us. They settle in, like water finding the low places, quietly shaping the ground long after the rain has stopped.

A dear friend of mine has a habit of calling himself an "idiot." He says it lightly, almost as a joke, the way we so often speak our oldest wounds, with a laugh to cover the crack. Every time I've heard it, I've told him he isn't. Every time, the word has come back anyway.

🕊️ So this week I stopped arguing with it. Somewhere in the quiet, I sensed the Holy Spirit gently nudging me: Don't fight the word. Redeem it.

✍️ I sat down with my pen and began to give each letter a new meaning. As the words came, I realised I wasn't inventing anything at all. I was simply naming what I'd already watched him live, year after year.

This is what I wrote to him:

I know you still feel it from time to time, but from now on, when I hear you call yourself an I.D.I.O.T., this is what I'm choosing to hear and reflect back to you:

I — Insightful
That may be the quality I notice most consistently in you. You see beyond the immediate problem. You see potential before there is evidence. You see capability underneath insecurity. You see what someone can become and then have the courage to tell them. You see things others often miss. More than that, you have an extraordinary ability to see potential in people, sometimes long before they can see it in themselves.

There is something particularly poignant about a man once given a diminishing name becoming someone who speaks enlarging names over other people.

D — Discerning
I know now that your encouragement isn't empty flattery. I've experienced that repeatedly. You ask questions. You observe. You weigh things. You notice patterns. You will challenge when necessary and affirm when the evidence warrants it.

You don't simply tell people what they want to hear. Your words carry weight precisely because they aren't empty flattery.

I — Intentional
You invest in people deliberately. You support without creating dependence, challenge without diminishing, and somehow know when to step in and when to let someone discover, "I can actually do this."

Again and again, you have nudged me towards trusting God, trusting what I have learnt, taking responsibility, making decisions and discovering that I actually can do the thing I was frightened I couldn't.

O — Others-centred
So much of what you do is about helping other people grow, lead and become more of who they were created to be. You open doors, share what you know, call out potential, give responsibility, see potential, make introductions, encourage growth, step aside when someone is ready, and then make room for others to step through and grow.

T — Trustworthy
This is where I would land it.
Not talented.
Not tenacious.
Not even a teacher, although all could fit.
Trustworthy.

Your words and actions have gradually taught me something I have found difficult to learn: that receiving help does not necessarily create a debt, that support does not have to become control, and that somebody can stand beside you without taking over. Your "I'm here if you need me" has meant more than you probably realise.

So, my dear friend, mentor and occasional self-proclaimed "idiot" 😄, I'm officially rephrasing the word.

I.D.I.O.T.
Insightful.
Discerning.
Intentional.
Others-centred.
Trustworthy.

I know that word was once spoken over him very differently. Perhaps that's precisely why I wanted to give it back to him with different words attached.

I keep thinking of kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. The crack is never hidden. Instead, it's traced with something precious until the place of breaking becomes the most beautiful part of the bowl. 🪨 I believe that's how our Father works with the words that once wounded us. He doesn't pretend the fracture never happened, nor does He leave it raw and jagged. He fills it with His truth until the very word meant to diminish becomes a witness to who we truly are.

What moved me most, though, was this: he has done exactly that for me. Through this season, he has quietly challenged the old words and beliefs that tried to define me, and taught my heart lessons it has found hard to learn.

🌱 So this wasn't repayment. Love can't be repaid, only passed on. It felt more like a feather caught on a gentle breeze, something light that had once been given to me, floating back to where it came from. I have freely received, and so I wanted to freely give.

The boy who was once called an idiot grew into a man who has spent his life calling greatness out of other people. I.D.I.O.T. doesn't describe what his father thought he lacked. It can now bear witness to the man he actually became. That word doesn't get to tell him who he is anymore.

I've come to see that the tongue really does hold both death and life. Every day we're choosing which fruit we'll eat, and which fruit we'll offer to others.

Some words wound.
Some words restore what wounded words tried to name. 💝

Perhaps, after all the times he has helped me rewrite an old story, this was one small opportunity for me to hand one of his old words back to him, rewritten. 💖

He has spent his life calling greatness out of others.

Today, I'm speaking a little life back into his. 💖

📖 "I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." — Acts 20:32 (KJV)

🕊️ In the end, I can't heal another person's wound. I can only speak life, then place them gently in the Father's hands, trusting His word of grace to do the deeper building. My part is small, a few letters written in love. His part is the gold.

As this quiet morning unfolds, I'm resting in the knowledge that nothing in us is too broken for His mending. The Potter's hands are still at work, gentle and unhurried, turning old fractures into seams of light. Whatever words have tried to define you, hear this softly: He has the final word, and His word over you is love.