I didn’t have much say either in the name my parent’s picked for me or in choosing the family I was born in. My initials were given to me in the beginning as an expression of trust and hope for a life of growth, excellence and service. A life that with each passing day would breathe in meaning and significance, uniqueness and continuity to this phonemic combination that stood for Me.
Year after year I grew into this name. I filled it with passion and experiences, failures and victories. Hopes and dreams. I became very much attached to it. I liked who I was and took great pride in all my accomplishments.
Twenty years into this journey, I hit a major roadblock. I discovered a structural fault in this process of building my name that required not just some cosmetic changes but a major overhaul of the foundation. My life’s blueprint neither included nor even took into consideration the Master Architect, the One and Only God revealed in Jesus Christ. After much turmoil and resistance (for no house can have two masters), I ran out of ammunition and like a blind puppy threw myself into this new identity of a child of God. I became a part of God’s strange, diverse and sometimes seriously weird family. I began to bear a new family name – Christian - entering into the complex, controversial family history carrying some unbelievable promises and privileges and some equally unbelievable baggage.
I still kept the name my parents gave me on the day I was born, discovering more and more each day how who I was and had been fitted in this new identity and new name. I’ve discovered the deaths I was called to die and life I was called to live. More often than not, I begrudged both equally. For grasping truth with my mind, and articulating with my lips, I learned, is not the same as living Him out.
As if my identity seismic shift wasn’t enough trouble to deal with on my own, few years later I was offered to receive a new name. A whirlwind romance and a few years later I became Mrs. S.
Few years after that my husband and I were granted an awesome responsibility of naming another human being. And then another. We talked and researched. We agonized and prayed. With reverence and hope we named our children trusting that their names would become unique expressions of lives of faith, growth, excellence and service to God and mankind. That with each passing day they would breathe in meaning and significance, uniqueness and family continuity to the phonemic combination that stands for ‘CG’ and ‘VG’ respectively. And, through that process, I became Mrs. C’s Mom and Mrs. V’s Mom.
With each layer of identity, with each new name, I experience a profound sense of loss – loss of independence, loss of the sense of control over my life as I take a terrifying step of faith, as I plunge out of the security of familiar and safe into the unknown. But, as I learn to grieve well and loosen my grip on my own life, embracing the paradox of life out of death, I become more of who God intends for me to become. I don’t lose or erase who I was – I build upon what God has graciously, generously imparted into me. Rather than being diminished by the change, I become even more Me! Once the new name begins to sit more comfortably on my shoulders I am amazed afresh by His love and His wisdom towards me.
And year in and year out, as I discern new ways to hold all my names with open hand, I am able to take on more and more of the marvelous mystery of who I am and one day will become – the one of a kind daughter of the One who never changes, whose Name is the only name that will remain forever.
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