To Be Known

In sixth grade, my best friend and I strolled through a maze of buses when all of a sudden... a boy called her name. It was not just any boy, it was the boy. The topic of a million super-serious-but-probably-not-that-serious middle-school conversations, giggles, and butterflies had yelled her name through his tiny bus window (at least… we were pretty sure it was him). Obviously we freaked out. “He knows my name!” she squealed the entire ride home as she squeezed my arm and we marveled at the idea that maybe he knows she exists and maybe, just maybe he could like her back.

There’s a longing there. Did you catch it? It’s a goofy example but I believe it’s a sign of something stronger and heavier inside each of us: we long to be known.

It doesn’t matter who we are, to what culture we belong, or what our personality is. It doesn’t fade with time, success, or maturity. So much inside us hinges upon this need to be seen for who we are and loved. We desire to be recognized and sought-after; we long for validation that we exist, we are understood, and to at least one other person our life matters. 

This longing, at least for me, is a force to be reckoned with, and any fraction of its fulfillment it can change everything. I want to be known.

Jesus asked His closest friends once, Who do you say that I am? I want to be like Peter, who blurted out so impulsively that He is Jesus the Savior, the fullness of life itself (Matt 16:15-16). Peter knew Jesus, and was known by Him. Peter’s name was handed to him by grace and it re-defined his future. Sometimes I hear God whisper the same question to me. I stumble through, although I am with every breath reminded, and flip through the pages of His heart on paper to realize all over again that He is Savior, beyond worthy of all I can give. 

But in my weakest moments, wrapped up in that question I have found another that I am infinitely more afraid of: I look into the face of my perfect Savior and He asks, Who do I say that you are? This is a tough one, but He is teaching me.

Since last January I found a new name, in Sierra Leone: I am Kadija (pronounced Kah-dee-jah). I am pretty sure God called me that before I ever heard it out loud – it just feels too right. Hearing it squealed repeatedly from a million directions, or whispered softly as tiny hands gently brush a stray hair from my face, is a kind of fullness I cannot describe. This name reminds me that I belong, that who I am is on purpose and I have something to give, that I’m known. I feel like I’m home, and all the love I’m filled up with just comes pouring back out, in an overflow. It's incredible.

And I’m not the first one - over and over God will give us a new name (or a few) to teach us that we’re known and re-teach us what we are created for. This kind of stuff our world upside down; I have seen it first-hand.

I have squeezed and tickled more than one small frame who once believed the world when it called them Unwanted or Orphan, but today are learning how all along God called them: Mine. Where once they knew loss and emptiness, today they are finding family and joy because He sees them and calls them by name. I have flooded with tears holding close a tiny, quiet heart branded Pain and Shame since before she could speak. But this precious girl is slowly learning instead what God calls her: Beautiful. And the name fits her. I’ve laughed out loud wondering if a boy once known as Abandoned could have had any idea he was called Pastor by my God, even before the name caught on with a house-full of adopted family and now a village-full of friends. I have seen such unbridled eagerness build in the eyes of one sick boy, so recently given the name Hopeless as today he begins to get better, to learn, and to enjoy the hope in his brand new name Adored.

My God knows that a longing is in us because He put it there. Our Father loves reminding us that we’re His, that He sees you and me and loves us better than anyone else could because He built us. He knows that when we get it, we can really start doing crazy things together because we’re not busy asking around for it anymore. God’s name for us draws us up and out of the one we thought we fit into, the one we were supposed to prove true despite our efforts, the one we couldn’t escape. He pulls us from the place we were headed, sits us up where we’d never belong, and proudly calls us by our new name: Worthy. He wipes away the sin that branded us, with the blood of His only child, and re-defines our insides and our future with grace.

Just like my friends an ocean away I am still learning to answer to His new name(s) for me. I’m slowly and painfully learning that maybe, just maybe, He who knows me delights in me and that fact alone can define and fill me like it did Peter. 

I’m still learning who He says I am, and still trying so hard not to let all the other names creep back in, but I’ll tell you a secret: if you listen closely, He never stops saying it. If you let the stillness in for a while, open up His love notes, offer Him a little room in your heart, you will hear it - whispered (and sometimes sung) over and over again - with each breath, each sunrise, each tear, each heartbeat, He knows you and He calls you by name: Beloved.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." - Jeremiah 1:5 

Love is and always was the longing placed inside my heart to know You and be known by You - All Sons & Daughters