The First Child Carried One Side Already

Nobody has said anything. That is what makes it loud.

Four years ago the first one was named for her husband's side, and it was lovely, and everybody was pleased, and one particular aunt cried at the naming and has told the story ever since.

And now there is a second one coming, and her own mother has said nothing at all, in a way that is not the same as saying nothing.

There have been two remarks. Not complaints. Remarks. One about how nice it had been last time. One that trailed off in the middle.

And everybody in that family, on both sides, is now running the same arithmetic in their heads, and nobody will say it, and the whole thing is sitting under Sunday lunches like something under a floor.

I want to name what has happened, because it did not happen on purpose and nobody is at fault.

A ledger got opened.

The first naming was a free gift, given with joy, with nothing owed. And the moment there were two children coming and two sides, that gift retroactively became the first entry in an account, and now there is a balance, and a balance has to be settled.

Nobody decided this. It assembled itself out of arithmetic. And a woman at thirty one weeks is now carrying a debt she never borrowed, on behalf of people who have not asked her for anything.

Have not the faith with respect of persons

There is an instruction at the start of James that is usually read as a passage about wealth, and the mechanism it names is the mechanism running in that kitchen.

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. (James 2:1, King James Version)

You are being asked to do something Scripture will not ask of you, and James 2:1 has never once made a believer into an allocator of honor. The written word refuses the whole business of ranking persons, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a distributing job off a woman who never applied for it.

The phrase is worth sitting with. Respect of persons. It means treating people according to their standing, weighing who is owed what, keeping an account of who has had their turn.

And James does not say do it fairly. He says do not do it at all.

You have been running an account Scripture tells you not to keep, and no verse anywhere made a family into a ledger. James 2 refuses the whole practice rather than asking for a better version of it, and the Spirit of God is what closes an account a person opened by accident.

The gift that turned into an entry

Now let me be practical about how this can be undone, because it is undoable and it does not require anybody to be confronted.

The first naming was a gift. It has to be re established as a gift, out loud, and that is done with one sentence rather than with a policy.

The sentence is something like: we used his father's name because we loved it, not because it was his side's turn.

Said once, warmly, to her own mother, in an ordinary moment. Not as an announcement and not as a defense.

You are able to reopen a gift with one sentence, and James 2:1 has never once required an audience for the ending of a reckoning. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a kitchen when a ledger gets closed, and the written word forbids the weighing of persons in a single line.

Because here is what her mother is actually waiting for, and it is not a name.

She is waiting to find out whether she is on the list at all. The two remarks were not a claim. They were a question, asked the way people ask when they cannot ask: is my family part of this child.

And that question has an answer that does not require a first name, and the answer has been available for eight months and has never been given because everybody has been busy being tactful.

You are able to answer the real question today, and Scripture never once made a first name the proof that somebody belongs. James 2 refuses the ranking, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in a family that stops counting.

Both names, on one page

So here is the assignment on this row.

Write down the name they are waiting for and the name you want, side by side, once.

One sheet, same handwriting, nothing else on it.

Because at the moment neither of those is a name. One is a debt and the other is a wish, and a debt and a wish cannot be compared. On paper they are two words for a child.

You are looking at two words rather than at two families, and James 2:1 has never once let standing settle a thing. The written word puts the ranking of persons out of bounds, and the Holy Spirit is present at a table where a woman stops allocating.

And notice something that nearly always shows up on that page. Very often the name that has been carried as an obligation is one she actually rather likes, and the obligation has been the only thing making it feel heavy.

And sometimes it is not, and she does not want it at all, and now she knows that clearly instead of guessing at it through eight months of tact.

You are permitted to want one and not the other, and Scripture forbids the weighing rather than asking for a fair result from it. The Spirit of God is what makes an honest preference possible again, and James 2 says have not the faith with respect of persons.