I Cannot Cook Is The First Thing I Say

You get it in early.

Somebody mentions food, or a restaurant, or what they made at the weekend, and within about four seconds you have said it. I cannot cook. Lightly, with a small laugh on the end, before anybody has asked and before anybody could possibly find out.

And it works. Everybody moves on. Nobody follows up. The subject changes and you are safe.

You have said that sentence several thousand times in your life and it has never once failed you.

Here is what it is doing, and you probably already know. It is a door closed before anybody can knock. If you say it first, nobody can discover it, and nobody can be disappointed, and there is no moment where somebody finds out something about you that you had not already handed over.

It is a good strategy. It is genuinely clever. And it has cost you a kitchen.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nobody in this article thinks you should already know how to do this.

There is no age at which not knowing becomes shameful, and nothing here is going to laugh at the sentence, because the sentence was built to protect you and it has done its job faithfully for decades. What is worth looking at is not the gap in your skills. It is what happens in a person when a thing gets said out loud several thousand times.

They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof

There is a line in Proverbs about what words do, and it is blunter than people expect.

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)

They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

That is the half nobody quotes. The first half is famous and the second half is the mechanism: whatever a person is fond of saying, they end up eating. The sentence does not stay a sentence. It becomes a diet.

And you have been fond of that sentence. Not because you enjoy it, but because it works, and a thing that works gets used, and a thing used several thousand times becomes something a person is living inside.

You are eating the fruit of a sentence rather than a fact about yourself, and something said to keep a room comfortable has never once been the same thing as a finding. Proverbs 18:21 puts the fruit on the far side of what somebody is fond of saying, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who gets it in early.

And notice the verse does not say the tongue creates reality out of nothing.

It says death and life are in its power, which is a statement about influence and consequence rather than magic. Nobody is claiming that saying you cannot cook made you unable. What it did was settle the question so completely that it never had to be asked, and a question never asked has no chance of being answered.

You have been settling a question rather than reporting on one, and a sentence that closed a subject has never once been evidence about the subject. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has closed this conversation several thousand times, and Proverbs 18:21 sets the fruit against what a person loves to say.

The sentence protects you from the wrong thing

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. The sentence is not protecting you from humiliation. It is protecting you from being offered a chance.

Think about what actually happens when you say it. The subject changes. Which means nobody ever says come over and I will show you, and nobody says it is easier than you think, and nobody says here, stand there and stir that.

Every offer that might have come your way in thirty years has been closed off four seconds before it could be made, by you, kindly, with a small laugh.

That is the real cost. Not the embarrassment you avoided. The invitations you never got, which you do not know about, because a thing that does not happen leaves no trace.

You were closing off offers rather than avoiding embarrassment, and a door shut before anybody knocked has never once told you who was standing outside it. Proverbs 18:21 makes what a person keeps saying into what they end up eating, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who has been closing a subject in four seconds for thirty years.

And here is the instruction, and it is the harder half of tonight.

Do not say it for a week. Not the sentence, not a variation, not a lighter version, not a joke that means the same thing. If food comes up, say nothing about your own ability at all. Let the pause sit there. Let somebody else fill it.

It will feel exposed and it will feel like something is about to happen, and nothing will happen, and that is the discovery.

You have been braced for a moment that was never coming, and a silence where a sentence used to be has never once produced the thing you were dreading. The Spirit of God is the one standing with somebody keeping her mouth shut for a week, and Proverbs 18:21 will not let words be neutral and will not make them magic either.

What tonight is

So here is the assignment, and it is in two halves. Cook one thing tonight, and do not say the sentence to anybody for a week.

Tonight. One thing. Keep it plain: eggs with something in them. Rice with an egg on it. Pasta with butter and cheese and a lot of pepper. Do not go out and get anything, and use what is already in that kitchen.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than information about you, and nobody has to be told about any of this.

You are doing this without a commentary for once, and food made in silence has never once needed a sentence attached to it in advance. Proverbs 18:21 puts the fruit on the side of what a person keeps saying, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody who said nothing tonight.

Then the second half. Eat it sitting down, at a table, on a plate, not standing at the counter. Sitting down is how a thing becomes an event that happened, and this one is not going to be announced, so it needs to be marked some other way. The chair is how you mark it.

You are marking this with a chair rather than with a sentence, and a meal nobody heard about has never once counted for less than one that got explained. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate and no commentary, and Proverbs 18:21 sets a whole life's diet on what somebody is fond of saying.