The First One Came Easily And This One Will Not

The first time, it took about ten minutes.

They were in the car. Somebody said it. The other one said yes. And that was the whole thing, and they told the story at parties for four years afterward, because it was a good story and because it made them feel like people who were good at this.

This time it has been eleven weeks.

And the eleven weeks would be survivable on their own. What is not survivable is the story that has attached itself to them, and the story goes like this: it came easily for her and it is not coming easily for him, and that must mean something.

Nobody has said that out loud in the house. It is being carried privately by at least one of them, and probably both, and it is doing quiet damage to a month that ought to be ordinary.

So let me take it apart, because it is not true and it deserves to be dismantled rather than soothed.

The first name did not come easily because the first child was more loved. It came easily because the field was empty.

Four years ago there was no last name to match against, because nothing had been paired with it yet. There was no sibling sound to consider. There was no name in the house already occupying the shelf. There was one slot and a whole language to fill it from.

Now there is a name in that house. And every candidate has to sit beside it, sound right when both are called up a staircase, not rhyme, not start with the same letter unless that is deliberate, not be obviously the weaker or the stronger of a pair.

That is not a harder heart. That is a harder problem.

To every thing there is a season

There is a line at the start of Ecclesiastes 3 that gets read at funerals and belongs just as much at a kitchen table in week eleven.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

You are inside a different season and not a lesser one, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 has never once ranked one season above another. The written word gives every purpose its own time without grading them, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that land on a man measuring this month against a Tuesday four years ago.

Look at what that verse quietly refuses to do. It does not say some seasons are the good ones. It puts planting and plucking up, weeping and laughing, all in the same list, at the same level, each with its own time.

Which means the fast season and the slow season are both listed, and neither is the pass mark.

You have been marking one season against another, and Scripture puts them side by side without a word of comparison between them. The Spirit of God is what takes the grading out of a man's hands.

What difficulty is not telling you

Now the practical part, because there is a specific fear underneath the comparison and it needs naming.

The fear is that the difficulty means something about love. That an easy naming was a sign, and a hard one is a sign too, and that a second child is arriving into a house that has less to give.

That fear is common and it is entirely wrong, and here is why. Difficulty in this is caused by constraints, and every single constraint in play right now exists because of a child who is already loved. The last name has to work because there is a family. The sound has to sit beside a brother's because there is a brother. The initials matter because somebody thought about initials the first time.

Every one of those is love from four years ago showing up as a rule this year.

You are working under constraints that only exist because a family was built, and no verse anywhere reads slowness as coldness. Ecclesiastes 3 gives each purpose its own time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a burden back into evidence.

There is also a simpler thing going on and it is worth saying plainly, because it removes about half the weight.

The first time, nobody was watching. Nobody had a story to live up to. This time there is a four year old story about how good they are at this, told at parties, and it has quietly become a standard. A couple who once chose freely are now performing against their own anecdote.

You are allowed to be slow at this in public, and Scripture never once made speed the mark of anything. The Spirit of God is what releases two people from a story they told about themselves, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 gives a time to every purpose.

The name that keeps circling back

So here is the useful thing, and it is not a method.

There is a name that has been in the conversation the whole eleven weeks. It has not won. It has also never been removed. It comes up, gets set aside, and comes back the following week.

That is not indecision. That is a name being lived with, which is exactly what the first one never got, because the first one was decided in a car in ten minutes and then simply became the child.

Which means this process is not worse. It is slower and it is more thorough, and if anything this second name will arrive having been examined in a way the first one never was.

You are giving this one more care and calling it failure, and the written word never once tied worth to how fast a thing arrived. Ecclesiastes 3 sets a season for everything, and the Holy Spirit is at work in the slow ones as much as in the quick.

And the circling name has a job that nobody has given it yet: it needs to be said out loud, in a house, in a sentence, next to the name of the child who is already there.

Because that is the actual test, and it has never once been run. It has been run in heads, silently, hundreds of times. It has not been run in air.

You have been testing it in the wrong place, and no name has ever once revealed itself inside a head. Ecclesiastes 3:1 speaks of a time for every purpose, and the Holy Spirit is present in a kitchen where two names get called together for the first time.