Who are you? It is a question that we get asked pretty regularly. My response is usually something along the lines of “My name is Maria.” And I would venture to say that your answer is probably really similar. “I am insert name here”
One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Africa was how everyone stared at me… all the time! My light skin was an instant eye catcher, children would cry and run from me because I looked different. When we would go into town we would hear people shout and wave “Azungu” which means white person.
A few days ago I noticed myself getting really perturbed with the fact that nobody knew my name. They didn’t bother to learn it. They just shouted azungu and expected me to respond. I wasn’t sure why all of a sudden this was so annoying to me. That has been what I have been called for a month and a half, so why is it just now beginning to bother me?
As I began to pray about it and press into why it bothered me so much, I began to realize how much of my identity is wrapped up in my name. Everything I am, everything I like, everything I have ever experienced, can be summed up in one statement… “I am Maria.” By not getting to know my name, it was like these people weren’t getting to know me. Knowing about someone is different from knowing them.
I still felt like God had more to show me in this though. There was more to the story. Over the next few days I really spent a lot of time praying into it. God brought to mind the book of John. Have you ever read the book of John? If you haven’t, I highly recommend checking it out. It gives a beautiful depiction of Jesus’ life and love for us.
Anyways, I digress. So God brought to mind the book of John. How many times in the book of John does the author mention his own name? By my count, zero. He always refers to himself as “The disciple whom Jesus loves.” Is that not also what my identity should be? I was very convicted about being so hurt by the fact that the kids we were ministering to didn’t know my name when John, one of the most influential people in the bible, one of the twelve disciples, did not ever attribute anything to himself by name. His identity was fully defined by his identity in Christ. How prideful I had been, thinking that my name was the most important thing that these people needed to learn about me. Not that I was a follower of Jesus, not that I loved them because Jesus loved them, not that I had left my home to follow Jesus all the way to their home to share with them the Good News of Jesus and encourage them, but they needed to know my name. All of a sudden, in the light of all the other things that they could remember, walking away from an interaction and remembering my name seemed so small.
But God had more for me in this revelation. My father always used to tell me that “God is never one-sided” meaning that there is never only one facet to what God is teaching, and this was of course the case here as well. God also brought to mind Paul and Peter, two men who God had renamed. I began to wonder how I would respond if God appeared to me and said that He was going to change my name, to change my identity, to change everything I think I am. Given the way that I responded to people simply not knowing my name, I am not sure that I would necessarily embrace that as well as I would like to think I would.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that being recreated in this way is exactly why I am here. It is precisely the reason that I have flown 10,000 miles away from home to a culture and a place I don’t know, where I am uncomfortable more than I am not, where I don’t speak the language and I don’t know what to expect from one moment to the next. In this place where everything is foreign, God is familiar. And in the uncomfortable, I am learning to find my peace and comfort in Him. He is changing everything I thought I was into exactly what He wants me to be. And my heart is growing to look more like His. While I may not be given a new name on my journey, I am learning to find my identity as the disciple whom Jesus loves.
