Imago Dei Blog

At the recent women’s forum, “What is it to Heal?” we discussed different facets and expressions of healing.  One woman in our community, Jamie, talked about healing as she considered how she is named.

All through scripture, God seems to see names and naming as *prescriptive* rather than *descriptive,* meaning he names someone in order that they can grow into who he sees them to be.  Abram’s name is changed to Abraham because he *will be* the father of many; Simon becomes Peter because Jesus knows his own future as the *rock* upon which the church will be built.  Jesus renames him *so that* he can become someone new.  The names God gives us are his own blessing, his promise, his hope, and ours.

Naming *often* comes in trouble, in pain.  It is easy to allow painful experiences to name us, to curse us with a constricted name that turns us toward death in our spirit.  Yet God offers to brand our names on us, our blessings or promises, on the ruptured, wounded, flesh of our spirits.

There is healing in this blessing, if we will accept our name from God.

Jamie shared this from her personal journal:

What can I say today.  I am so deep down sad today.  This morning in church, a 92 year old former architect and former women’s dean at Multnomah, urged us to “hang in” and “hang on” to Jesus during difficult times in our faith.  And she walked us through the stages of vine cultivation to show how our lives progress through difficult time along the way to producing so much fruit.  She said that absolute hardest time, harder than temptation or loneliness or feeling “tied down” is when we tear ourselves down, saying we’re not good enough, or that “God loves us generically, because he has to, not because of who we are.”  Really, deep down, we think we are too disgusting to love, even for God.  And it was this word, “disgusting” that brought tears that I couldn’t stop, all the way through the rest of the service, the communion, the closing song.  That’s what my mom called me in that horrible phone conversation.  Disgusting.  No longer recognizable to her.  So disgusting that she didn’t want to be part of my life anymore.  And I realized, as I heard this woman saying our deepest fears and self-flagellations about our unloveliness that that’s exactly how I am feeling, how I feel resigned to feeling.  Alone, unwanted, and so totally unlovable.  So resigned that I didn’t realize how much it was hurting, and how much I had decided to absorb these words into the truth I hold about myself.  I took those words in and they became truth.  I’ve been trying to tell myself that these are the words of someone who is not well, that they reveal so much more about her own problems than they do about any reality about me, but I can’t seem to hold on to that.  The only thing I kept thinking is that she is my mother, and she, seemingly by magic or destiny or biology, has the power to name me, a powerful power.  You are disgusting.  And so I am.  You are unwanted.  And so I am.  I realized today that I am still a mash inside, so completely crumpled up and then trying to live and give out of this mashed up self.  So what can I do?  I can try to discern God’s truth about me, cling to it, and repeat it often, in order to live it out, to live from the truth of it.  God loves me just the way I am.  I am lovely.  And so I am.  I am worth knowing and loving.  And so I am.  I am wanted.  And so I am.  Please God, help me to believe.