I Am Asking A Child To Carry Something Unusual

The name is beautiful and hardly anybody has it.

That is the whole appeal and it is also the whole problem, and both of those things arrived at the same moment, in the same week, and she has not been able to separate them since.

Because there is a sentence she cannot get rid of, and it is this: am I doing this for her or for me.

Do I love this word because it is right for my daughter, or because I want to be the kind of person who chose something like this.

And once that question is in a person it does not leave, and it cannot be answered by thinking, and she has been thinking about it since July.

I want to hold this gently, because a woman asking that question about herself is not being self indulgent. She is doing the opposite. She is examining her own motives, unprompted, at some cost, on behalf of somebody who cannot yet object to anything.

That is care, and it is being experienced as guilt, and those are not the same thing at all.

And underneath, there is a second and larger fear that she has not said even to herself in those words: that she is asking a person to carry something for her.

Thou shalt be called by a new name

There is a promise in Isaiah about a name given by God, and what matters about it is who does the choosing.

And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name. (Isaiah 62:2, King James Version)

You are looking at a naming God does Himself, and Isaiah 62:2 has never once treated a distinctive name as a weight laid on somebody. The written word gives it as glory rather than as a burden, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman who has been suspecting herself since July.

Notice the setting. It is a promise, given to a people, in a passage full of restoration. A new name is what arrives when things are being made right.

And the whole chapter is about somebody who was called forsaken and desolate being called something else entirely, and the new word is not described as a thing to be carried. It is described as a gift with delight in it.

You have been treating a distinctive name as a load, and Scripture presents one as the mark of a restoration. Isaiah 62 has God Himself doing the naming, and the Spirit of God is what puts delight where suspicion has been sitting.

The question that cannot be answered by thinking

Now the practical part, and it starts by retiring the question.

Am I doing this for her or for me is not answerable. Not by anybody. Motives are mixed in every human decision and always have been, and a person who searches for a pure one will search forever and find nothing, because there is no such thing on this earth.

That is not a lowering of the standard. It is a description of people, and it is the reason nobody in Scripture is ever asked to certify their own motives before they act.

You are asking a question no person has ever once been able to answer, and no verse anywhere required a pure motive before a decision could be made. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the searching that a person cannot do on themselves, and Isaiah 62:2 has God naming without any audit of anybody.

So here is a better question, and it is answerable, and it takes four seconds.

If nobody ever knew you chose it, would you still want it.

If the answer is yes, then the self suspicion has nothing to stand on. The vanity theory requires an audience, and a woman who would choose the same word alone on an island is not performing for anybody.

And if the answer is genuinely no, then that is real information, obtained honestly, and worth having.

You are able to test it in one question, and Scripture never once asked anybody to certify themselves before acting. Isaiah 62 puts the naming in God's mouth, and the Spirit of God is what gives an honest answer without contempt attached to it.

And the carrying

But the second fear is the real one, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reframe.

Will she have to explain herself.

Yes. Perhaps two hundred times in a life. That is true and I am not going to pretend otherwise, and anybody who tells her it will not happen is not being straight with her.

You are entitled to the honest answer and not a soothing one, and Isaiah 62 has never once handed anybody a comfort with the truth removed from it. The written word makes a promise about a naming without pretending the years before it were easy, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can be trusted with a straight sentence.

And here is what is also true, and it is the part that never gets counted.

People with unusual names are, almost without exception, glad of them by about twenty five. Ask them. The near universal report is that they hated it somewhere between nine and thirteen, and have liked it ever since, and would not swap it for anything.

Because a name that is theirs alone becomes a small piece of identity rather than a chore, and the explaining becomes a thing they do briskly and rather enjoy.

You are handing her something she will very likely be glad of, and Isaiah 62:2 has never once made a distinctive name a punishment. The Holy Spirit is at work across the years between nine and twenty five, and the written word gives a new name inside a promise of restoration.