I Am Naming A Person I Have Imagined

He has built somebody.

Over about seven months, out of nothing, the way people do. A boy who is good with his hands. Quiet at school and then not quiet at fifteen. Likes being outside. Laughs like his own father did.

And there is a name that fits that boy exactly, and he found it in June, and it has been settled ever since.

And two weeks ago, in a shop, he saw a boy of about ten having a complete meltdown over something small, and the mother handling it well, and he thought: what if he is nothing like the one I made up.

And he has not been right about the name since.

I have thought about this out on a lot of long drives and I want to say the honest thing rather than the reassuring one.

He is right to be worried. Not about the name. About the picture.

Because the picture is the risk. A man who has built a specific boy over seven months has, without meaning to, drawn up a specification, and a real child cannot help arriving as somebody else, and what happens next depends entirely on what the father does with the gap.

And the name is not the problem. The name is just the label he stuck on the picture, and it will come off cleanly.

In thy book all my members were written

There is a verse in Psalm 139 about a person being written down before they existed, and it settles who has been doing the designing.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:16, King James Version)

You are not the author of this person, and Psalm 139:16 has never once put the writing of a life in a parent's hands. The written word says in thy book, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than a rebuke to a man who has spent seven months drawing.

Look at what is already done in that verse. All his members written. In continuance fashioned. Before there was one of them.

There is a book, and there is a person in it, and that person is finished in the writing long before anybody meets him.

Which means the boy arriving in a few weeks is not a blank waiting for a father's picture, and he is also not a failure to match one. He is somebody already written down, by somebody else, in detail, and he is going to be himself.

You have been drawing somebody who was already written, and Scripture puts the fashioning under God rather than under a father's imagination. The Spirit of God is what makes that a comfort instead of a correction, and Psalm 139 has the whole person recorded in advance.

What to do with the picture

Now the practical part, because the picture cannot simply be deleted and it should not be.

Imagining a child is not a fault. It is love arriving early with nothing to attach to yet. Every parent does it and nobody should be ashamed of it.

The question is what happens on the day the real one turns out different.

You are allowed to have imagined him, and Psalm 139 has never once made an early love into a sin. The written word is a psalm about being known rather than about being correct, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a good instinct from what a man does with it next.

And there are two things a father can do with that gap, and they are entirely different from each other.

He can grieve the picture quietly, once, and let it go, and be interested in the actual boy. That takes about a year and it is the ordinary thing and most people manage it without ever describing it.

Or he can keep the picture, and hold the boy up against it, and communicate a small disappointment about four hundred times a year without ever saying one word out loud.

You are able to choose which of those you do, and no verse anywhere made a father the designer of anybody. Psalm 139:16 has the members written in God's book, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a man able to let a drawing go without resentment.

And here is the good news for the name, which is the actual question on the table.

The name is fine. It will not carry the picture. Within a year that word will mean the real boy so completely that the imagined one will be unrecoverable, and no father in history has ever looked at a five year old and thought of the specification.

The name attaches to whoever turns up. That is the one thing about names that is entirely reliable.

You are able to keep it without keeping the picture, and Scripture separates the writing of a life from the naming of one. The Spirit of God is with a man handing over a drawing he made in good faith, and Psalm 139 does the fashioning in God's book.

Say it about somebody you do not know

So here is the assignment, adapted for this, and it is a small deliberate exercise.

Say the name out loud, in a full sentence, about a person you know nothing about.

Meaning: say it as a sentence about somebody with no qualities attached. Not the boy who is good with his hands. Just a name, in a sentence, about a person, with none of the specification in the room.

Something like: this is him. Or: he is here. Nothing about what he is like.

You are able to say it with nobody attached to it, and Psalm 139:16 has never once required a parent to know who is coming. The written word describes a person written in advance by somebody else, and the Holy Spirit is present when a father says a name over a stranger.

And it will feel strangely empty, and that emptiness is the point of the exercise.

That is what the name actually is right now: a word with nobody in it yet. It has felt full for seven months because a picture was standing in the space, and hearing it empty once is how a man finds out that the word survives the picture leaving.

You are permitted to hold an empty name, and Scripture fills it with a person nobody has met. Psalm 139 has the members written already, and the Spirit of God is with a man who lets a word be empty for a few weeks longer.