What’s In a Name?

Yesterday’s lead story in the Chicago Tribune caught my eye. How could it not?

 I was running from work to an early start for my Tuesday evening grad class, but over a quick bowl of soup I glanced at the newspaper and was immediately arrested by the headline: “Living a Life Unknown.”

The feature story was a detailed report on the dozens of John and Jane Does who turn up each year at Illinois police stations and hospitals. Most are identified, but the five people profiled in this story have not been. No one knows their names. I studied the face of an older woman known only as “Seven Doe “ – age unknown – who has been in state care for nearly 10 years.  Commented another resident at the Chicago facility where Seven lives, “If it’s possible for a person to be nobody, I think this is it.”

It’s hard to imagine waking up each day without a single living family member or friend who cares about you. No social security number. No permanent address. No name.

Names matter. During my pregnancies, Mike and I spent hours mulling over just the right monikers for our kids.  Adam Wallem was easy – our first man-child and one who would carry my family name as well. 

 When Amber Elizabeth was born, we were still deliberating over our final three picks until my obstetrical team pointed out her deep brown baby hair with golden streaks and said, “Just  look at her. She’s Amber!” And so she was, with my grandmother’s name added.  

And when it came to our second son, Jordan Michael, the choice was easy.

Names matter a great deal. The gospel of John records the famous conversation when the future apostle Andrew first brought his brother Simon to meet Jesus.

Jesus looked intently at Simon and said, “Your name is Simon, son of John – but you will be called Cephas” (which means “Peter”).

Simon was well known in the gospels not for his faith but his failings. Yet when the Messiah studied Simon’s face, he didn’t see Simon for what he was. He saw in him what he would one day become: Peter – the rock.

Names convey value.

Dr. Michael Halleen illustrates this principle from the musical “Man of LaMancha” based on Cervantes’ story of Don Quixote.

“The hero greets Aldonza, a crude woman of the streets, as though she were a queen. He gives her a beautiful new name, Dulcinea. Tough and cynical, she responds with skepticism, yet gradually starts to become the good person he believes her to be. She sings,

Can’t you see what your gentle insanities do to me?

Rob me of anger and give me despair.

Blows and abuse I can take and give back again;

Tenderness I cannot bear.

“At the end of the play Don Quixote lies dying, confused and unaware. Aldonza pleads with him to remember her name. Is it so important, he wonders?

“Everything!” she says. “My whole life! Once you found a girl and called her Dulcinea, and when you spoke her name, the angels seemed to whisper, Dulcinea, Dulcinea!”

Names matter. The one you’ve been given, the one you make for yourself, and the name bespoke by angels that God alone knows.

Is it truly possible for a person to be “nobody?”  Not in God’s sight.  He knows who the beautiful Chicago resident called “Seven Doe” truly is.

And He knows your name too.

“I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it.”  Revelation 2:17

What “Kind” Are You?

Sir Robert and Lady Mary in a scene from Downton Abbey

In a recent episode of the Emmy® Award winning British costume drama Downton Abbey, eldest daughter Lady Mary is touring a neighboring estate with her fiancé Sir Richard Carlisle, a ruthless newspaper magnate with more money than scruples.

Casting a dubious gaze at the cavernous home her future husband intends to purchase, Mary inquires skeptically, “And how are we to furnish this place?”

“We’ll buy all that we need,” Carlisle responds blithely.

Unimpressed, Mary comments, “That’s what your kind does.”

Undaunted, Richard replies, “And what does your kind do?”

“We inherit,” fires back Lady Mary.

I remembered that scene as I was dusting this past Saturday. Like many Americans of my generation, my grandparents immigrated to this country from Europe and brought virtually no possessions with them. I cherish the few pieces we have that connect us to them: the oak wall clock that my grandfather wound by hand, the caned love seat that had pride of place in my grandmother’s 1920 parlor.

But our living room is also furnished with a sofa table picked up at a neighbor’s garage sale and wing chairs hauled home from a consignment shop. Our English maple dining room table was a flea market find. We purchased the demi lune in the entry from the previous owners. Every cabinet in our kitchen held someone else’s dishes before housing ours. Virtually nothing in our entire home has been purchased new, and I like it that way. Each piece tells a story. The simple act of dusting is like reading a slightly tattered but well-loved novel.

So what “kind” does this make me, I wondered?

Whether nouveau riche or toujours poor, we all furnish our dwellings with things that are handed down or handed over in exchange for currency. Some may receive quite a lot from ancestors; others absolutely nothing at all.

But there is one inheritance that is available to all of us.

It doesn’t involve coming from wealth, but rather coming into it.

It doesn’t depend on mortal grandeur, but rather divine grace.

It’s not about what we surround ourselves with now but what’s waiting for us then.

I love watching Downton Abbey and imagining what it might be like to wear such gorgeous gowns and dine on meals prepared by loyal servants. My garage-sale treasures and flea-market finds wouldn’t much impress the Crawley family.

But every year that passes I am growing closer to coming into an inheritance that would make even the Countess Dowager Violet swoon in envy. It’s the birthright of all who place their faith in the One our Father sent to redeem us – to buy us back from the darkness to which the enemy of our souls would have us consigned.

The Apostle Peter described it this way: “We have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.” (1 Peter 1:4).

It’s an inheritance that cannot be earned nor bought but has been freely, sacrificially given. It is ours by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s the kind of inheritance our kind – your kind – all kinds of people may one day claim.

And I’m kinda excited about that. You too?

Redefining Victory in 2012

My vow of making this a YOLU year is being sorely tested.

No, not by job, family or health. Those are in the I-am-grateful-for category. But there’s one frustrating fact I overlooked when I chose 2012 as the Year of Living Uncomplainingly. It’s an election year, for heaven’s sake.

Actually I’m not sure heaven wants anything to do with the morass of negativity out there. The Florida primaries were just over a week ago, and news reports indicated that over 90% of the ads airing in Florida the week before the primary were negative.

“As soon as you know that a campaign is going to hit Florida,” wrote Dave Barry in the Miami Herald, “you should go to Home Depot and buy sheets of plywood three-quarters of an inch thick. You should take these home, cut them to size, and then, using a hammer and nails, fasten them firmly to every TV screen in your home.”

So how do you stay positive in a negative world, one where even the people vying to be our leaders sling mud at each other?

Decades ago in an early ministry situation, Mike and I had to work with an individual who had an exceedingly sharp tongue. I swear the woman could  shred paper with it, but people were her project instead. Cutting down the minister and his wife was child’s play. Out of respect – she was our elder, after all, and one in a position of authority – we did everything we could to earn her approval. We tried consulting her, placating, appeasing…all without avail. Our efforts to please her failed every time.

We called her Our Lady of Perpetual Disapproval (privately, of course). And we could not make Our Lady happy no matter what we did.

Around that time I read an essay by an author who grew up with an emotionally distant, uncaring father. Even as an adult she was carrying the wounds of the child who could not get her dad to respond affectionately no matter how much she tried. She finally sought professional counseling, and her “Aha!” moment came when the counselor asked her to hug the pole-lamp in his office. Puzzled, she complied.

“Well, did it hug you back?” he asked.

“Of course not!” she replied impatiently.

“Did you expect it to?” he probed.

“You see, that’s the problem,” the counselor went on to explain. “Your father is emotionally incapable of responding affectionately to you, yet you keep thinking there is something you can do to change him – to get him to love you. When you are finally able to think of him as being a bit like this lamp here, then you’ll realize that the only thing you can change is your expectations.”

When I read that story, I thought of Our Lady of Perpetual Disapproval. As a young, inexperienced pastoral couple we thought we could somehow win her approval if we just tried hard enough. But all our efforts to please her failed. Nothing we did deflected her negativity towards us or others.

And then one day, maybe it was even an election year like this one, I was talking to my heavenly counselor about the situation.

“Child,” He said, “It’s time you learn that you need to redefine victory. You think you can win this woman over, but you’re exhausting yourself in the process. And by focusing on her faults you’re failing to see the good in others.

“The next time she criticizes you, accept her words as a challenge – an experiment to see if you can resist absorbing her barbs or hurling them back. Check her words at the door to your heart; don’t let them enter.

“And if you can respond to her the way my son would, then you’ll know what real victory is all about.”

And guess what? When I started to treat Our Lady in a more Christ- like way, she eventually came around. Right?

Wrong. It never happened. She and her husband finally took themselves off in a huff and, sadly, crossed swords with another pastor and his wife.

It’s been decades since I’ve seen Our Lady. I’ve heard she has suffered great losses. I grieve for her. But her treatment of us no longer rankles. Maybe I finally grew up enough to realize that only a very unhappy woman would put so much effort into making others unhappy too.

To  most of us winning implies triumphing over an opponent, getting our own way, vindication. We want our critics to apologize or at least recognize how deeply they have wounded us. Most of the time this never happens.

In God’s economy, “winning” has more to do with our spiritual development than our opponent’s defeat. He is more interested in who comes out of a battle than what the outcome might be. True victory comes from being able to truly love our adversaries as God does regardless of their behavior.

So despite the title, this post about redefining victory in 2012 really has nothing to do with politics at all.

Or does it?

Too Good to be True – Part Two!

If you read Tuesday’s post, you know that some stories that are too good to be true really do happen. In a haystack the size of Tacoma, Washington, my daughter found her stolen wedding rings.

 But I can’t wait till next Tuesday to share the rest of the story!  I’ll let Amber tell you in her own words:

“This past Tuesday I was at the Y again. Same time of day as when my rings were stolen last week but I had moved away from my accustomed locker location. (I kind of resent the old one now.) I was getting ready to leave when a woman in her late 60s sits down suddenly on a stool and turns to the two of us in that section.

“Have either of you seen someone hanging around here?” she asks.

Oh no, I was thinking, I know that look. Someone had stolen JoEllen’s watch and wedding rings from her locker, which hadn’t been locked, sadly. I told her I had just been through this and I fetched the supervisor, who then proceeded to tell JoEllen a story about another woman whose rings had been stolen… my story! So I jumped in and told them how I had gotten them back. I was able to tell her what I did and where I had found the rings. I left her my number and told her to be proactive.  God must have meant for me to be there at that exact time. Pretty good story, right? It gets better!

Later that evening, I get a call.

“Hi Amber, it’s JoEllen… we met earlier today at the Y.” I thought maybe she was looking for some more advice. “I just had to tell you what happened!” she said.

JoEllen had gone to her jeweler to get pictures of her lost rings, since I had advised that she enlarge pictures of her rings to show around. The jeweler told her to give the gold buyer a try that very afternoon so JoEllen and her daughter and grandson decided to go first to the shop that had purchased my rings.

They headed over and took a seat on a couch to wait for other customers to finish. A young couple sat on the other couch and when it was their turn, they approached one of the gold buyers and plunked down… JoEllen’s jewelry!

JoEllen stood up, waved her pictures of her jewelry and shouted, “That’s mine!!!!” What a moment of beautiful justice!

 The police were called and the man was arrested. He wasn’t the same guy who sold my rings. The girl, who is a minor, somehow disappeared. The guy selling the jewelry said he knew just her first name, so the police went onto the Facebook account of Jacob, the guy who sold my rings, and found her, thereby obtaining her full name and where she goes to school. They compared the pictures of her to the gold buyer’s surveillance videos, with which they were able to verify that she was present when my rings were sold.  So it looks like all three people involved so far have evidence against them. Wow. I never imagined it working out this way.  God wrote an amazing story and the truth here is as exciting as fiction!”

So sometimes that which is lost comes back to you again.

Sometimes you can comfort another just as you were once comforted.

And sometimes  an experience you’ve gone  through may not have been meant for you at all, but to make you useful in His hands.

 Is this too good to be true, or what?!