It Sounds Too Grand For A Child

She said it out loud in the hospital gift shop, to nobody, holding a very small hat.

And she felt absurd.

That is the whole of it. The name is enormous. It is the kind of word that belongs on somebody who has done something. It has weight in it, and history, and it sounds like a room going quiet when somebody walks in.

And she is about to hand it to a person who will weigh seven pounds and will not be able to hold their own head up for four months.

So there is a second list now, and everything on it is smaller. Softer edges. Names that sound like a person you would not have to explain.

I want to say the thing that is actually happening, because it is not modesty and it is not taste.

She is embarrassed on her daughter's behalf, in advance, for a period of about three years, and she is planning to spend the remaining seventy seven paying for it.

That is the arithmetic and nobody has laid it out for her.

Because the smallness is temporary and the name is not. And a word chosen to fit an infant will be worn by an adult for six or seven decades, and the fit that mattered was never the first one.

Let no man despise thy youth

There is an instruction Paul gives a young man, and it is aimed exactly at this feeling.

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12, King James Version)

You are looking at a large thing being handed to somebody young, and 1 Timothy 4:12 has never once made smallness a disqualification. The written word tells him not to let anybody hold his youth against him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman feeling foolish in a gift shop.

Notice what Paul does not do. He does not tell Timothy to wait. He does not scale the responsibility down to match his age. He gives him the whole thing and then addresses the embarrassment separately.

Let no man despise thy youth. Which means somebody would, and Paul knows it, and his answer is not to reduce the size of what is being given.

You have been shrinking the gift to fit the age, and Scripture hands over the full weight and deals with the awkwardness afterward. The Spirit of God is what carries somebody through the years before they grow into a thing, and 1 Timothy 4 sets the example before it addresses the youth.

Who feels ridiculous

Now the practical part, and it turns on one question.

Who exactly is feeling absurd in that gift shop? Not the baby. The baby has no view on this and will not have one for many years, and by the time she does, the word will simply be her name and she will have no memory of it ever being large.

The person feeling absurd is a woman of thirty three, holding a hat, saying a big word in a small shop, aware of a shop assistant.

That is worth saying plainly, because it means the entire objection lives in a three year window that belongs to the mother rather than to the daughter.

You are the one carrying the embarrassment, and no verse anywhere asked a parent to choose out of their own discomfort. 1 Timothy 4:12 tells a young man not to be diminished by his age, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a mother's feeling from a daughter's future.

And here is the thing about the three years, which makes them survivable.

Nobody laughs. That is the fear and it does not happen. What actually happens when a large name is said over a small baby is that people say it back, slightly delighted, because a big word on a tiny person is charming rather than absurd, and everybody except the mother finds it lovely.

The absurdity is entirely inside the woman saying it, and it lasts about four months, and it goes when she has said it two hundred times.

You are able to survive four months of your own self consciousness, and Scripture never once made a person's discomfort into a reason to give somebody less. 1 Timothy 4 gives the whole charge to somebody who looked too young for it, and the Spirit of God is what stands underneath a person until they grow.

Say it over something small

So here is the assignment for this row, adapted, and it is deliberately uncomfortable.

Say the grand name out loud over something small, in a full sentence, to one other person.

Over a hat, or a pair of shoes that would fit a doll, or whatever small thing is in that house. Out loud, with the name in a sentence, in front of somebody.

You are able to walk into the dreaded scene deliberately, and 1 Timothy 4 has never once told anybody to wait until a thing stopped feeling large. The Holy Spirit is the one who goes into it first, and the written word answers the room rather than avoiding it.

The point is not to test the name. The point is to run the exact scene that has been dreaded, once, on purpose, and find out that the room does not do anything.

You are able to do the frightening version today, and 1 Timothy 4:12 has never once told anybody to avoid the moment they are dreading. The written word says let no man despise it, which assumes the room and answers it, and the Holy Spirit is present in a shop or a kitchen where somebody says a large word out loud.

And what comes back is nearly always warmth. Somebody says it back. Somebody says, that is a proper name, in a tone of approval. Nobody in the history of the world has laughed at a large name on a small baby, and the fear of it has no evidence behind it at all.

You are dreading a reaction that has never once happened, and Scripture addresses the despising rather than shrinking the charge. 1 Timothy 4 leaves the size of the thing intact, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman saying it out loud today.