I Have Never Liked My Own Name

There is a small thing that happens when she hears it.

Not a large thing. Nobody has ever noticed it in thirty four years. It is about a quarter of a second, somewhere in the chest, and then it is over and she answers normally.

It happens on the phone. It happens when a receptionist reads it off a screen. It happened at her own wedding and she has never told anybody that.

And now she is choosing for a daughter, and there is only one thing she actually wants, which is that this child never has that quarter of a second about her own name.

And she has no idea how to arrange that, because she does not know where hers came from.

That is the honest position, and it is why every list she has made this year has felt useless. She is not choosing a name. She is trying to prevent something whose cause she cannot identify.

So let me help identify it, because it is nearly always the same thing and it is nearly never the word.

He will joy over thee with singing

There is a verse in Zephaniah that is startling every time, and it is about a voice.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, King James Version)

You are being sung over rather than tolerated, and Zephaniah 3:17 has never once described God as putting up with anybody. The written word says rejoice, and rest in his love, and joy over thee with singing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach somewhere a quarter of a second deep.

Read what it does with the voice. He will joy over thee with singing.

Not: He will approve of you. Not: He accepts you. He sings. Which is a thing done by somebody who is delighted, out loud, about a specific person.

That is a sound made about her. And whatever sound is attached to her name at the moment, that one is also attached to her and is older and is louder.

You have a voice on you that is louder than the one you flinch at, and Scripture puts God's singing over a person as a settled fact. The Spirit of God is what carries that down to where a quarter of a second lives, and Zephaniah 3 says he will rest in his love.

Where a flinch comes from

Now the practical part, and it is worth going carefully, because this is the useful thing.

A flinch at your own name is almost never about the name.

You are not fussy about a word, and Zephaniah 3 has never once described a person's own reaction as something to be argued out of them. The written word puts a delighted voice over somebody instead of a corrective one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who goes down to where a reflex actually lives.

It is a recording. Somewhere, at about seven, or nine, or eleven, that word was said by somebody in a particular tone: exasperated, or mocking, or cold, or on the way to something unpleasant.

And it went in, and the tone stayed attached to the sound, and thirty years later the body still runs the quarter of a second before the mind has caught up.

That is why the word itself never explains it. Other people with that name do not flinch. It was never in the letters.

You are carrying a tone and not a name, and no verse anywhere made a word able to do that on its own. Zephaniah 3:17 puts a different voice over a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can reach a recording that is older than a person's own memory of it.

And that is the thing that makes the fear about her daughter answerable, which it has not been all year.

Because if the flinch is a tone, then it is not handed on by a word. It is handed on by how the word is said in a house.

Which means she is not choosing a name that will prevent it. She is going to be the voice that prevents it, ten thousand times, at a door and up a staircase and across a kitchen, in a tone that will be the recording that goes in.

You are the recording, and Scripture puts a singing voice over a person rather than a careful choice of syllables. The Spirit of God is what makes a mother's voice the one that goes in first, and Zephaniah 3 has God delighting out loud.

Say your own, and then hers

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and the first one is the hard one.

Say your own name out loud, in a full sentence, and then say your daughter's.

Yours first. Out loud. In a sentence about yourself, in a warm voice, deliberately.

Because in thirty four years that word has probably never once been said by her own mouth in a kind tone. It has been answered to, and spelled, and given to receptionists, and never said warmly by the person it belongs to.

You are able to put a new recording over an old one, and Zephaniah 3:17 has never once left a person with only the first voice they heard. The written word has God singing over somebody, and the Holy Spirit is present in a kitchen where a woman says her own name kindly for the first time.

And then her daughter's, straight after, in the same voice.

Because those two are connected in a way that has not been visible: the tone she uses on her own name is the tone that is going to be available for her daughter's, and a woman who has never once said hers kindly has some practicing to do.

You are able to give her the voice you never had, and Scripture puts the joy and the singing on the same side. Zephaniah 3 says he will rest in his love, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman saying both names out loud today.