The Middle Name Feels Like A Consolation Prize

It was a good solution and everybody said so.

The name she and her husband loved went first. Her aunt's name, the one the whole family had been quietly hoping for, went in the middle. Both families were pleased. There was no argument. Somebody said, that is perfect, and meant it.

And a week later she started to feel something she has not been able to shake since.

That she solved a problem by handing a woman she loves the second slot, and dressed it up as an honor.

Nobody has said that to her. She has said it to herself, at eleven at night, several times, and it has grown.

I want to look at this straight, because there are two entirely different things happening here and only one of them is real.

The first is a question about the middle name, and it has a plain answer that most people have never thought about.

The second is a question about her, and it is the one that is actually keeping her awake, and it is not about a name at all.

Let each esteem other better than themselves

There is an instruction in Philippians that describes exactly what she did, and it does not call it a compromise.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. (Philippians 2:3, King James Version)

You are looking at your own behavior described in Scripture as a virtue, and Philippians 2:3 has never once called that a second best outcome. The Holy Spirit is the one who was at work when a woman went looking for a way to include somebody, and the written word puts the esteeming of another above oneself as the instruction.

Read the two things that verse rules out first. Strife and vainglory. Fighting for a position, and doing a thing to be seen doing it.

That is what a naming can turn into. And a woman who found a shape that gave two families something, quickly, without a fight, and without making a performance of her own generosity, did the thing the verse asks for and has been calling it a fudge ever since.

You have been grading a kindness as a compromise, and Scripture never once ranked an act of inclusion beneath a clean win. Philippians 2 asks for exactly what happened in that house, and the Spirit of God is what was moving when it happened.

What a middle name actually is

Now the plain answer about middle names, because the whole feeling rests on an assumption nobody has checked.

Who told her the middle name is the smaller half.

You are living under a ranking somebody invented, and Philippians 2 has never once graded one part of a name above another. The written word rules out strife and vainglory and says nothing whatever about slots, and the Holy Spirit is the one who dismantles an assumption a person has never checked.

Not her aunt. Her aunt has almost certainly not thought of it that way for a second. In most families, a middle name is the place where the family history goes, on purpose, because the first name is chosen for the child and the middle one is chosen for the line.

That is not the consolation slot. That is the slot with the past in it, and everybody who has one knows it: ask any adult what their middle name is and they will nearly always tell you who it came from.

Almost nobody can tell you why they got their first name. Almost everybody can tell you where the middle one came from.

You are holding the half that carries the history, and no verse anywhere ranked one part of a name above another. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a false ranking apart, and Philippians 2:3 rules out vainglory and strife and leaves inclusion standing.

And there is a practical detail here worth saying, because it is the thing that will actually make the feeling go. The middle name is only invisible if it is never said.

In houses where the whole name gets used, at the door, on a birthday, on a certificate on a wall, in the way a mother says all of it when she is delighted, that middle name is fully present in the life of the child and everybody hears it.

You are the one who decides whether it is heard, and Scripture puts the esteeming into what a person actually does. Philippians 2 makes it a practice rather than a position, and the Spirit of God is what turns a slot on a form into a word that gets said in a house.

Why it is really keeping her awake

And now the second thing, which is the one that matters.

A woman who lies awake at eleven at night wondering whether her kindness was actually a slight is not thinking about a middle name. She is checking her own motives, alone, without evidence, in the dark.

And that is a habit worth naming, because it will do this again with something else in about a month.

You are permitted to accept that you meant it well, and Philippians 2:3 has never once asked anybody to audit themselves at midnight. The written word gives an instruction and not an inspection, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that searching, gently, and not at eleven at night by lamplight.

There is one honest question to ask, once, in daylight, and then it can be left.

Did she choose the arrangement to include her aunt, or to look like somebody who had included her aunt?

If it was the first, and it plainly was, then the verse is describing her and not accusing her.

You are described by that verse and not accused by it, and Scripture asks for lowliness of mind rather than for self suspicion. The Spirit of God is what ends an audit that has been running since the spring, and Philippians 2 rules out vainglory and then leaves a person free.