I Will Say Her Name Out Loud Again

She has not said it out loud in four years and she is about to say it forty times a day.

That is the whole situation and it is not a small one.

The name is her sister's. Her sister died at thirty six, in a March, and since then that word has become something she writes rather than says. It is on a stone. It is in a message she has not deleted. It is what she calls her, in her own head, about once a day, in a voice nobody hears.

And she is going to give it to her daughter, which means it is going to be in her mouth constantly, at a door and up a staircase and in a shop and in the middle of the night for the next eighteen years.

And she cannot work out which of two things is going to happen, and both of them frighten her.

Either she is going to be undone. Every time. Forty times a day, for months, with a baby in her arms and no time to be undone in.

Or, worse, she is going to get used to it. The word will smooth over. It will stop meaning her sister and start meaning only a small person, and the last live thing she has will have been spent on somebody who is not her.

That second fear is the one she has told nobody about, because it sounds like she is putting her daughter second.

Joy cometh in the morning

There is a line in Psalm 30 that people put on cards and it is much more exact than a card allows.

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. (Psalm 30:5, King James Version)

You are given an order rather than a promise about a feeling, and Psalm 30:5 has never once said the night would be short or easy. The written word says weeping may endure, which is an allowance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman who is four years into one.

Read what it actually claims. Weeping may endure for a night. May endure. That is permission for it to be long, and it does not put a length on the night at all.

And then: joy cometh in the morning. Cometh. It arrives. It is not manufactured by the person in the night and it is not something she has to produce.

That is the whole shape of it: the night is allowed and the morning is not her job.

You have been told the night may last and that the morning arrives on its own, and Scripture puts no length on either. The Spirit of God is what brings the morning rather than a person managing their way to it, and Psalm 30 allows the weeping without hurrying it.

Both fears, answered plainly

Now the practical part, and both of the fears deserve a straight answer rather than a comfort.

The first one: yes, at the start.

The first hundred times will land. Some of them will land hard, in a shop, at a bad moment, with no room to be undone in. That is true and pretending otherwise would be useless.

And it does not stay that way. Not because the grief goes, but because the word acquires a second occupant, and a word with two people in it is not a thinner thing.

You are able to survive the first hundred, and Psalm 30:5 has never once required a night to be short before the morning was allowed to come. The written word permits the weeping to endure, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the shop at the bad moment.

And the second fear, which is the real one, and here is the plain answer.

She will not forget who it belonged to. That is not what happens. Nobody who names a child after somebody they loved has ever once lost the first person inside the second.

What happens is that the name stops being only a grave. It becomes a grave and a girl, and that is not a replacement and it is not a smoothing over. It is the word doing something it has not been allowed to do in four years, which is to be about somebody who is alive.

You are not spending the last live thing, and Scripture puts the morning after the night rather than instead of it. Psalm 30 keeps both in one verse, and the Spirit of God is what lets a word carry two people without either being lost.

And there is a practical thing that makes this much easier, and almost nobody thinks of it.

Say her sister's name, separately, on purpose, about her sister, out loud, once a week. In a sentence about something she did. Not about the baby.

That keeps the two from collapsing into one, and it means the word never has to do all of it at once.

You are able to keep them both alive out loud, and no name has ever once had to choose between two people it belongs to. The Holy Spirit is at work in both, and Psalm 30:5 allows a night to endure while a morning is coming.

Say it over her as a blessing

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

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

Now, before she arrives, in a quiet room, deliberately.

Because the first time that word leaves her mouth in four years should not be an accident in a shop. It should be chosen, and quiet, and done on purpose, in a room where being undone is entirely allowed.

You are able to choose the first one, and Psalm 30:5 has never once made anybody schedule their own morning. The written word allows the night to endure and brings the morning itself, and the Holy Spirit is present when a name that has been silent for four years is said out loud on purpose.

And it may be that nothing comes out the first time. That happens and it is not a failure. It sometimes takes three attempts and a lot of quiet.

And when it does come, it will be the first time in four years that word has been said about somebody who is going to be alive tomorrow.

You are giving that word a living person to belong to, and Scripture puts joy coming in the morning as an arrival rather than an achievement. Psalm 30 does not ask anybody to hurry, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman saying it out loud today.