Yearning for a Name

What defines you? It's an interesting question, isn't it? There may be some answers that rattle off your tongue without hesitation or even conscious forethought. Other answers may seem deeper, embodying a more meaningful connection between your heart and your head. Still others may be completely hidden. These are the ones you only realize when you lose them. These are the pebbles of identity to which you did not know you were clinging—at least not until you see them skipping across the river, thrown by a hand you don't know. You watch them disappear into the swirling water, knowing there's no chance you'll ever find them again. You miss their cool, smooth surface as you realize with bitterness that your hands are now empty. Somehow you didn't think such a small thing could affect so much.

This is what happened to me a few years ago. It felt violent, inexplicable. All at once, the smallest anchors of my identity were torn from my hands—and I didn't even realize I was holding on to them. It happened as my parents separated and (in the course of time) divorced. The pain of a broken family is one that you probably cannot know unless you've experienced it, but let me introduce you to a bit of the taste.

For me, it started with a deep, inexpressible, and undefinable sadness. There was an aching sense of responsibility for my siblings, a desperate desire to reach out to somebody—or maybe for somebody to reach out to me (I didn't know which)—and an almost distant confusion over how to process everything that happened. It almost seemed like the world was moving on without me, blaring its whistle as it huffed and puffed out of the station, leaving me on the bench, drained to an emotionless and staring shadow that not one passenger on the machine seemed to notice.

What about the "identity pebbles," you ask? The realization of their former existence came in the most usually trivial questions. A waiter asks how many are in your party and receives blank stares. It was six...but now, um, we'll have to count. How many? I don't know. A new professor asks where you're from. Well, one parent lives in one city. I grew up there. The other parent lives in another city. Where am I from? I don't know. A friend asks if you're free one weekend. I'm free 'til Sunday at 4:00, I guess. That's when we switch houses for the week. Am I free? I don't know. An application has a blank space for your name. I know my first name. I got my middle initial down. I know my last name legally, but it's kind of hard to write when there's so much weight to it now. What's my name? I don't know.

I'm sure there have been times when these seemingly simple questions have thrown you just like the pebbles in the beginning of this post. Your head spins and you wonder. Your arms flail in the swirling water, and the questioner just looks at you blankly. Your name? Come on. You've got to at least know your name.

But try as you might, you've got nothing. Your mind's blank, and your hands begin to grow clammy as each second passes—warning you of the fact that every bit of delay might mark you as increasingly awkward. You're lost. Who are you?

I want you to know, before I continue, that we're all yearning for a name. In some way, even the people who answer the simple questions easily and confidently are wondering where their identity really lies, what their name really is. Names are powerful. We don't need expert linguists to tell us that. We know that there's deep meaning in whatever group of sounds signifies our existence. Names tell us that we are known. They give us a chance to know. They help to define us as "us," as distinct from the "other." They have meaning. They have power.

But what happens when we don't know the answers to the questions? What happens when we really don't know our name?

I'm convinced that the whole thing is not so much a search as it is a return. We don't need to look for a name, you see. We just need to believe that the one we've got is really ours.

I read a story one time of a man called Innocent Smith. He gave a lecture about names. It was described as follows:

He began rationally enough by dealing with the two departments of place names and trade names, and he said...that the loss of all significance in names was an instance of the deadening of civilization. But he then went on calmly to maintain that every man who had a place name ought to go live in that place, and that every man who had a trade name ought instantly to adopt that trade; that people named after colours should always dress in those colours, and that people named after trees or plants...ought to surround and decorate themselves with these vegetables...What happened at the crucial moment was that the lecturer produced several horseshoes and a large iron hammer from his bag, announced his immediate intention of setting up a smithy in the neighborhood, and called on every one to rise in the same cause as for a heroic revolution.¹

This story really hadn't much to do with the rest of the book itself, but I think we can draw much from it. No, you don't have to be a blacksmith if your name is "Smith" any more than I must live in a meadow ("Dupree"). But we really must return to the name we've been given by One much greater than whoever it was that gave us our surnames. This must be our "heroic revolution."

You see, my friends, the name we must return to is simple and pure and true. It is short and easy to remember, but our forgetfulness of its significance "was an instance of the deadening of civilization," the deadening of our very selves. Live again, then, and remember that this one word is your name. And this is enough. Note that again: this name is enough. You don't need the little pebbles of identity when you have this rock. In fact, you become overwhelmingly grateful when you see those other pebbles disappearing into the gentle current of the river. You might even be the one to throw them. This name is enough—more than enough. Grasp it.

Beloved child, you are HIS.

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¹ The story is from a little book written by G.K. Chesterton and entitled Manalive. If you haven't read it, then read it now. It's short and ridiculously humorous—yet its message is life-changing.