We Chose And They Are Still Mourning It

She is fourteen months old and she has a name, and it has been her name since the day she was born.

And it still comes up.

Not as an argument. Nobody argues. It comes as a small remark, three or four times a year, always at a gathering, always with a laugh on the end of it so it cannot be objected to.

We nearly had a different one in this family, did we not.

I always did think she looked like a name that was not hers.

And every time, the mother in that house does the same thing, which is to smile and say nothing and feel something small and hot go through her chest, and then go home and be quiet in the car.

I have known a good many families and I want to say two true things about this, and the second one is the useful one.

The first is that the remarks are not usually malice. They are almost always grief with nowhere to go. Somebody wanted a thing, did not get it, has never said so directly, and it comes out sideways at Christmas because sideways is the only route it has.

The second thing is the one that matters more, and it is this: a settled decision does not become unsettled by being remarked upon. It stays settled. The only thing that changes is how much a woman pays for it each time.

That cost is the actual subject of this page.

Remember ye not the former things

There is a line in Isaiah spoken to people who kept looking backward, and it is not a rebuke.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. (Isaiah 43:18, King James Version)

You are permitted to stop revisiting a finished thing, and Isaiah 43:18 has never once required an old decision to be defended again. The written word says do not consider it, plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than a scolding.

The verse after it is the one everybody knows: behold, I will do a new thing. And the instruction sits in front of that as a clearing of the ground. Stop turning the old thing over, because there is something present that needs looking at instead.

And here is what makes it useful in that kitchen. The old thing being turned over is not being turned by the mother. It is being turned by other people, once a season, and she has been picking it up every time and turning it herself for a week afterward.

You have been carrying a thing back to the table that God calls a former thing, and Scripture says do not consider it. Isaiah 43 clears the ground before it does anything new, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the clearing.

What the remark actually needs

Now the practical part, and it turns on something small.

A remark like that is looking for a reaction. Not maliciously. It is a probe. It goes out, and it comes back with something, and whatever comes back tells the person whether the subject is still alive.

For fourteen months, what has come back is a smile and a silence and a very slightly changed face, and every single time that has told the person: yes, this is still a live subject, so it can be mentioned again next time.

The reaction is what keeps it in circulation.

You are able to let it land on nothing, and no verse anywhere required a settled thing to be defended in order to stay settled. The Holy Spirit is what takes the heat out of a chest at a table, and Isaiah 43:18 tells people to stop considering the former things.

And the thing that ends it is not a confrontation and is not an explanation. It is warmth and a subject change, in the same breath, without any defense attached.

Something like: she is very much herself, is she not. And then something about the child, and the conversation goes there, because it is more interesting than a name from two years ago.

No case made. No ground defended. Nothing to push against.

You are permitted to give no reaction at all, and Scripture never once made a woman responsible for other people's grief about a decision. Isaiah 43 says do not consider it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody at a table who has decided not to pick it up.

And her name, out loud

But before any of that, the assignment on this row, and it is the part that will do the most.

Write down her name and the name they wanted, side by side, once. And then say hers out loud.

The page first, because after fourteen months of remarks those two words have become a comparison rather than two names. On paper, next to each other, they are two words and one of them is a girl who is fourteen months old.

You are looking at a word and a ghost, and Isaiah 43:18 has never once made a road not taken into a rival. The written word says do not consider the things of old, and the Holy Spirit is present at a table where somebody stops running a comparison.

And then say hers out loud, in a sentence about her, because that is what has quietly stopped happening. Her name has become a subject rather than a word for a person, in her own mother's ears, and that is the actual damage the remarks have done.

Not the doubt. There is no real doubt. The damage is that a lovely word got turned into a topic.

You are able to give her back her own name today, and no remark has ever once had the standing to make a child's name into a topic. The Holy Spirit is with a mother saying her daughter's name out loud in the yard tonight, and Isaiah 43 clears the old ground on purpose.