I have lived like a child who never learned her name, lost and wandering.
So it went each morning: I wake on cotton sheets, under quilt of fragile threads, and hear the calling of names. Names I’ve called myself; names learned when young, that refuse to be forgotten. Names I’ve made my own.
In the waking, they jab, and I drag pillow over head, press into mattress, burrow deep into escape, but still I hear and cringe.
Why have I answered these names so long?
Ugly. Loser. Flabby. Mess.
I have lived like a child who answers to the names of name calling; a child who takes toxic names and calls them her own.
I had thought I was the only one. Until I read Martin Lloyd-Jones words,
“Take those thoughts that come to you the moment that you wake up in the morning… instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way… you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and… what God has done, and God has pledged Himself to do.”
C.S. Lewis agrees:
“[T]he real problem of the Christian life comes… the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”
I wasn’t alone in this self-hatred? Others walking this Christian life woke too to the wild animals growling, sneering, names?
Either the Beast would devour me… or it was time to take seriously my first job, the one upon waking.
In coming light, I run fingers along taut stitches, fraying ones, and call out His names instead of listening to the snarling ones. I remind myself of God, saying His names:
Oh All Glorying One… Abba…. Perfect Holiness…. Lover.
I trace thread and remember who He is instead of what those names say of me. I remind myself of who God is, what His names speak of Him:
I feed on You, Bread of Life, drink of You, Living Water, rest in You, God of all Comfort.
The very moment I wake each morning, I’m learning to find the other voice, and let the larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. I remind myself of what God has done with thanks for simple things:
Thank you, Jesus, for the slow tick of clock, bathing warmth of light, smooth spread of sheets. Thank you for this breath, and this heart beat and this moment, full, pregnant, with life. “I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.”
I fill lungs with fresh time and hear His voice, larger, quieter than the rest, sweeping me up. I name Him, ascribe thanks to His name, and, in that, He renames me. When I awake to Him, to love, to all these good gifts, I come into who I am.
All this– the blood of His Son, the breath of His Word, the moving of His Spirit — crow calling from grey branches of oak, snow singing drip of melting, wind murmuring of day down through the orchard — I awake and He says, “All this, for you, Hephzibah.”
Hephzibah?
I don’t know this name.
But He gives of Himself and the gift tags reads: “For you… for you will be called Hephzibah.”
I have known names, hate-sharp, tearing ones, but He flows in with truth: “No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate.” (Oh, I have known those names, and worse.) “But you will be called Hephzibah… for the LORD will take delight in you” (Isa. 62:4).
For the Lord will take delight in you. But I complain, yell, dissolve. I am late, flabby, behind. Surely He knows all this? He mustn’t — or how could He name me this?
And yet if I but name the gifts in a day, stay attentive to all this passionate, magnanimous, inundating love – the tickle of a child’s breath-warm whisper…. the thick of hand-knit socks…. the length of long sun spilling in old doorways– I can’t deny the outrageous truth of what He names me.
Though He intimately knows exactly who I am.
Years of wandering lost, hounded relentlessly by a pack of howling names, the act of giving thanks is tenderly leading me to who I am in Him. The voices of self-hatred are slowly, surely, drowning in this waking to all Father’s gifts and I hear my true name: “My delight is in her.”
I am Hephzibah.
And He is all Grace.
:::
Lord God, when the voices of self-condemnation bark snarling names, turn me to thanksgiving. For when I attend to Your gifts, I call myself the name You stunningly call me: “My Delight is in her.”
Related: Looking for Love
Yes, the answer is yes!
Photos: morning bed, by Hope Voskamp, used with permission,
day spilling across old floors
