They Still Call Me The Old Name

It came across four lanes of traffic on a Thursday and it went into her like a needle.

She had not heard it in nine years. It was outside a bank, and there was a man on the far sidewalk with his arm up, delighted, entirely friendly, shouting a name that used to be hers in a voice that had known her since she was seventeen.

And her body turned around.

That is the part. Not the name. The turning. Her feet moved before her head did, and she was facing him with her hand half up before any considered part of her had been consulted at all, and in the two seconds it took him to cross she had time to feel about nine separate things, none of which she would want written down.

He was lovely. That is the other thing. He hugged her, he asked after her mother, he told her about a job, and he called her by the old name four more times in eleven minutes and there was no malice in a single one of them, because to him it is simply what she is called.

She walked to her car and sat in it for a while.

Because here is what she has never said out loud to anybody in nine years: the old name still fits, and that is the whole problem. It is not that it is wrong. It is that it is not wrong enough. It came off a girl who did a great many things that this woman does not do, and when it is shouted across four lanes something in her still stands up and answers to it, and the standing up is what frightens her.

She is forty-four. She leads a group of women on a Tuesday night, twenty-six of them, some of whom would follow her anywhere.

And every so often, in the middle of something good, a sentence turns up: they all still know what you were called.

The turning around is not a confession

Let me deal with the turning first, because that is where the fear is and not in the name at all.

Your feet moved before you did. And in the two seconds afterwards you drew a conclusion about that, which is that something in you is still the girl who answered to it, and that the nine years are a coat.

That conclusion is not warranted and I want to show you why in plain mechanics before I say anything spiritual.

A name learned early is stored in a place that has nothing to do with identity. It sits with the sound of your mother's footsteps and the smell of a particular hallway, and it is wired to the part of you that turns toward a shout, and that wiring is not moral. It is the same system that makes you look up when somebody drops a tray. Turning around is a piece of hearing, not a piece of allegiance.

Now here is what God says about the naming, and it is worth reading who is doing it.

And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name.Isaiah 62:2

Which the mouth of the LORD shall name. Not chosen by the person. Not voted on by the neighborhood. Not issued by the people who knew her at seventeen.

The naming authority in that verse is a mouth, and it belongs to God, and the entire weight of the sentence sits on whose mouth it is.

You are called by a name that God named, and that is not encouragement for a woman outside a bank, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is arriving in the two seconds rather than in your understanding of Isaiah 62.

And notice what comes just before it. The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness. The righteousness is already there to be seen. The new name is not a reward for having outrun the old one. It is the recognition of something that has already been done to her.

Now let me say something about that man with his arm up, because I do not want him to become a villain.

He was delighted to see you. He asked after your mother. He is not carrying an archive; he is carrying a friendship, and the name is just the handle it has always had. You are not obliged to correct one person on that sidewalk, and nothing here asks you to, and a woman who spends the next nine years managing what other people call her has swapped one prison for a slightly better decorated one.

You are named by God whatever anybody shouts across four lanes. Scripture puts the naming in His mouth, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been building twenty-six women on a Tuesday night through a woman who thinks her nine years are a coat.

And here is the last of it, and it is for the sentence that turns up in the middle of something good.

They all still know what you were called. You are not a woman with a secret that somebody might say out loud. They can say it. Let them say it. It is a handle on a door, and the house behind the door was renamed by the mouth of the Lord, and no volume of shouting in any street has ever had the authority to overturn that. Isaiah 62:2 puts the naming in the mouth of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit has been building twenty-six women through you on a Tuesday night while that name was still being shouted.