What's in a Name?

“Do not fear: I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name; you are mine." Isaiah 43:1

 I passed out blank paper and pencils and asked my students to choose several colors. Then, using the room’s white board to draw my own example, I asked them all to write their names in the middle of the paper, nice and big. Puzzled, they looked at each other and then at me. Surely this was not content for a college class?

But as I wrote “Linda” in the middle of the space I’d made on the board, they followed suit. “This is the name the world knows you as,” I said. “But what other names or roles do you have?”

With no further instruction, I turned back to the white board and began to cover the square I’d drawn with other words: Mother, wife, sister, daughter, teacher, aunt, writer, reader, knitter, professor. Then I added nicknames I’d had through the years: Honeybear, Bubbles (don’t ask), Giggles, Lyn, Da (my brother’s childhood name for me).

 Still curious and unsure of the purpose, the 31 adults in the class began to fill their own pages. Within ten minutes, they’d loosened up, using a multitude of colors, writing in cursive and print and bubble letters.

 Finally, I turned back to them. “We all have a lot of names and a lot of roles,” I told the class. “Now I want you to circle the name or the role that YOU choose to identify yourself. Who are you?”

 Slowly, they all began to smile. Returning to college as an adult is not an easy task. They needed to see themselves as capable students, to break away from the naysayers who told them they could never earn a college degree. To be something other than what they had been.

 On Sunday, Pastor Tim told the story of a woman in Joshua 2 who was known by one name: Harlot. I imagine her blank piece of paper might have held other words: slut, prostitute, whore and additional derisive terms. But she could have added other roles: daughter, sister, spinner of linen, protector of family, seeker of truth. Roles no one else in Jericho called her, but things she saw in herself.

 All of Jericho knew what Rahab did. It was how she was known. Her house was built against the outer wall, the seedy side of town, and all her neighbors could see the many men that entered into the house. The travelers who came seeking “the harlot Rahab” told her stories of God’s miracles, such as the parting of the Red Sea and the overthrow of Sihon and Og (Bible Gateway). And while her neighbors only saw a woman with loose morals, God saw someone whose faith could make her a heroine.

 Can you imagine the scene? In Joshua 2, the spies come
to Rahab. Given her reputation, no one thinks it odd when strange men enter her house. The neighbors probably just shake their heads and wink at each other. But she, astute woman, knows the stories she has heard from travelers about the God of Israel are true. She makes the decision to throw her lot in with the spies; she takes a risk to save herself and her family.

 Pastor Tim summed it up this way:



1. Rahab knew there was a problem. In her case, more than one. She was not only a prostitute, she did not believe in God.
2. Rahab responded to God’s salvation. She did not let her name or her reputation stop her.
3. We are like Rahab. We might not have her exact sins on our piece of paper, but unflattering things about us are scrawled all over it.

 In Matthew 1:5, we note another name Rahab can add to her paper: ancestress of Jesus. Rahab lived the rest of her life as the wife of a righteous man, Salmon, and was the mother of Boaz. She is one of only four women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Quite a change from the name she was known as on the streets of Jericho.

 After the initial “Introduction to college skills” class, most of my adult students went on to graduate. Some even asked for letters of recommendation to graduate programs. And many still keep in touch with me, years after they have gone onto other things. They came to see themselves, not as others saw them, but as they saw themselves.

Just as Rahab came to see herself as God saw her.

 It does not matter what happened before. All that matters is that God knows us and calls us by name.

 He has redeemed us! (Isaiah 43:1)

Twenty Seconds of Insane Courage

Anyone who knows me knows that I love journals. Give me a place to pen my thoughts, and I am a happy camper. Over the years, students and colleagues have given me any number of beautiful journals. Some, like the one made of red leather, I have considered too beautiful to mar with my sometimes erratic thoughts. Most of the time, I use a plain old spiral notebook (although I am getting better at using more elegant journals, so keep giving them!). Today, my daughter gave me a special journal.

The purpose of this little journal--which will slip neatly into my purse--is to remind me that it takes only "twenty seconds of insane courage" to change your life. The quote, in case you don't recognize it, comes from the movie We Bought a Zoo, which we watched on Thursday during another one of the endless snow days winter has given us this year. We liked the line so much that Bonnie and I, with career decisions to make, both posted it on Face Book.

Bonnie's decision will keep her in the same school and is, in that regard, a bit simpler than mine but still important to her. Mine could have far-reaching consequences. I am thinking, quite seriously, of leaving my full time job and spending more time on writing and building a tutoring service for adults.

For me to do such a thing is insane. It is ludicrous. But the idea has nagged at me for several years. In fact, all the way back to the summer I spent with the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project, writing for six intense weeks in a modular classroom parked on the lot of West Chester University's Bull Center.

It was the first time I really shared my writing with anyone. I'd always liked to write and thought I was pretty good at it. But it never occurred to me that I had actual talent. There, in that hot trailer back in 1998, I heard colleagues say it again and again: "You are so good! Why aren't you a published writer?"

Why? Why, indeed. Because I am and have always been the good girl. Because, since before 1998, I have had to deal with an unstable husband and three children who needed me. Because I was afraid of failure. Because teaching is an acceptable career path and writing is unreliable. Because--I'll just say it--I lacked the courage.

Yet, since 1998, I have done many things that required a great amount of courage. I have spent fourteen years supporting my chronically ill husband, both financially and emotionally, in his complex recovery from a car accident in 2000. I have waited out 26 surgeries, several of which held his life in the balance. I have raised my three kids, practically alone, and all have graduated from college and none are felons. I have lost my beloved mother to a stroke and seen my daughter through the heart-break of a divorce. I have lost jobs and found jobs and worked far too many jobs. And, along with doing all of that, I have earned my graduate and post-graduate degrees, battled the vision problems caused by kertaconus, and found that along with a genuine love of teaching, I have a passion--a gift--for teaching adult students.

And, almost as a post-script to the above long list, I have written and published two books. Which, I am happy to say, people seem to love.

But I am still trying to find those twenty seconds of insane courage.

For years, I have told my adult students that they can choose, at any point in time, to change their lives and choose a different path. But I have continued to travel the same path, letting only circumstances divert me, but never stepping off.

I plod along, making ends meet but not ever really getting ahead, making a difference but always feeling as if I could do more, wanting more from life and more from myself. But, good girl that I am, I tell myself to just be grateful for what I have.

But today, on our way to Michael's to buy yarn because eight bins of yarn certainly means that we need more, I told Bonnie I was continuing to pray about her decision at work. Then she, daughter of my heart, told me this:

"Mom, you have so much to offer the world. I don't think even you know how special you are, how talented you are. And, yes, you can continue teaching full time and part time and taking on extra classes and you will make a difference in the lives of your students and your faculty. For some people, for most people, that would be enough.

"But you," she continued," are gifted. I see it. Everyone sees it. Take the chance, Mom. Be the writer you know you can be, that I know you can be. Set up your business and write and trust God. For just twenty seconds, be insanely courageous."

Later, at the check-out, she gave me this little journal with its telling message: At any given moment you have the power to say, "This is NOT how the story ends."

"This," she said to me, "is a place for you to keep those insane moments."

Two years ago, a new friend introduced to me Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. A line from the book continues to reverberate with me: Step out and the net will appear.

 So, here is the question: Do I have enough talent, enough pure insanity, to put less of myself into taking on more and more work to provide a few more dollars, or do I put more of myself into what I feel I am called to do? Can I step out and trust in the net?

What is said about insanity is true, I think, You get it from your kids. I am getting mine, those twenty insane seconds, from my daughter.