I Want It Said With Love First

It started as a lovely thing and it has become a job.

The lovely thing was this: she wanted the very first time her daughter's name was ever spoken over her to be a loving one. Not a nurse reading a chart. Not an administrator. Her own voice, warm, first.

That is a good instinct and I want it said clearly that it is good.

And then it grew.

Because if the first one matters, the second one matters. And then there is the question of who else is in the room and what tone they will use. And the relative who says everything slightly flatly. And the friend who will make a joke. And a whole grid, in her head, of voices to be arranged, on a day that will contain approximately none of the arrangements she has made.

She is trying to build a soundproofed room around a word, and it cannot be done, and she has been at it since about week nineteen.

I want to name the thing underneath it, because it is not really about the first voice.

She is trying to control what her daughter hears, forever, starting on day one. And that is not a naming problem. That is what love looks like when it has nowhere yet to go and finds a project.

Perfect love casteth out fear

There is a sentence in John's first letter about what love does to fear, and it is the exact diagnosis here.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18, King James Version)

You are being freed from a torment rather than told to relax, and 1 John 4:18 has never once described fear as a mild inconvenience. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman arranging a grid at two in the morning, and the written word says fear hath torment, plainly.

Notice what casts it out. Not information. Not preparation. Not a better plan.

Perfect love. Which, in the verses just before it, is God's love toward a person, and not a person's own effort at loving well.

That matters here, because the grid is being built out of love and is producing torment, which the verse says is what fear does, and the fear has been dressed up as devotion for four months.

You have been calling a torment a devotion, and Scripture names the torment out loud and says love casts it out. 1 John 4 puts the casting on the love and not on the arranging, and the Spirit of God is what does the casting rather than a better plan.

What is actually going to happen

Now the practical part, and it is a plain description of the day.

The room will be busy. There will be people in it who were not expected. Somebody will be tired and somebody will be brisk and somebody will say the name flatly on a form, and that is what happens on those days and it cannot be prevented.

And her daughter will hear approximately none of it as tone. Newborns do not receive tone from strangers in a busy room. What they receive, over the following months and years, is the voice they hear most, close, constantly, which is going to be hers.

The first saying is not the one that goes in. The ten thousandth is.

You are the voice that goes in, and no verse anywhere made a first moment into the whole of a person's inheritance. 1 John 4:18 puts the casting out of fear on the love rather than on the circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that work over years and not in a room.

And here is the freeing part, and it needs saying plainly to somebody who has been building a grid.

Not one of those other voices was ever hers. Not the relative's, not the nurse's, not the friend who makes jokes. She has been trying to be responsible for a set of things that were never assigned to her, and the exhaustion of the last four months is the cost of holding something that was not hers to hold.

You have been carrying voices that were never yours, and Scripture puts the perfecting in love rather than in control. The Spirit of God is what takes an unassigned job off somebody, and 1 John 4 says he that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Say it as a blessing

So here is the assignment on this row, and it is the same one the whole row gets, and it is exactly right here.

Say the name over the child once, out loud, as a blessing rather than a decision.

Now. Before the day. Over the place where she is.

Because the whole grid has been built to secure a first saying, and the first saying is available today, in a quiet room, in the one voice that was ever going to matter.

You are able to have the first one now, and 1 John 4:18 has never once required a room to be arranged before love could be spoken. The written word puts the casting out on love itself, and the Holy Spirit is present when a mother speaks a name over a child weeks before anybody else gets a turn.

And that is the answer to the whole four months, and it is smaller than the grid and it does everything the grid was trying to do.

The first voice does not have to be secured on the day. It can be given tonight, and it can be given again tomorrow, and by the time that busy room happens, the count will be several hundred to one and nobody in that room will be able to change it.

You are able to make the count uncatchable before anybody else arrives, and Scripture casts out the fear with love rather than with a plan. 1 John 4 says there is no fear in love, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman blessing a name out loud tonight.