There is a Power in the Naming

Last month I was welcomed in to the most incredible community of women in Story101.  We live in different countries, on different continents.  Most of us have never met in person.  We come from different faith backgrounds and life experiences, but we all work in the medium of the written word and support one another through that journey.   We encourage each other in our writing.  We cry and laugh together.  We applaud one another’s successes.  We push each other through the rough stuff.  Sometimes we just get on the phone and pray together.  These women are amazing.  I love them.  And I am so grateful to have them in my life.   

This past week’s assignment was to write the hard thing.  I’ve struggled.  I sat down every day last week and attempted to write it.  All I ended up with were fragments of stories.  One day birthed a letter that will never be sent.  Another day dawned on the image of an elderly woman lost in a library, desperately searching through a card catalogue for a book whose title she couldn’t remember.  One day saw nothing but echoing sobs and a heart-aching longing for a friend who left too soon, laments for all that could have been, but never will be.  I borrowed the suggestion of my friend, Abby, one night and penned a permission note to myself:  To embrace anger and loss and grief.  To celebrate and lament with the same breath. To extend grace to those whose grief does not mirror my own.  But at the end of the week when I looked back at all my words, I realised I had written only portions of the hard thing.  I wrote circles around it without ever writing through it, without ever actually naming it. 

There is a power in the naming.  In the opening chapter of Hosea, God tells Hosea the names which should be given to the children bore by his wife, Gomer.  Their son will be called Jezreel – the place where God will destroy the power of Israel.  Their daughter will be named Lo-Ruhamah –“not loved”.  And their third child, a son, to be named Lo-Ammi- “not my people”.  There is a power in the naming.  Verse 9 cuts through the heart:  “for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”  Wow.  But Chapter 2 redeems:

“Say of your brothers, ‘My people’, and of your sisters, ‘My loved one’…. and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.   I will plant here for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’ and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” 

There is much more to the book of Hosea, but I always seem to dwell here. The place where God destroyed, He will plant and bring new life, those unloved will now know love, those who were not His will now know His embrace.   The naming reveals the redemption.  If it wasn’t broken it wouldn’t need restoration. 

Our next assignment in Story101 is memoir.  We’ve been asked to identify a theme for our memoir and consider how we would illustrate it throughout our work.  I am not writing a memoir, but I’ve been applying the exercise to my writing and story in general.  And without a doubt, I want the theme of my story to be redemption. I want the plot of my life to reveal restoration.  I want the marvellous scandal of grace and renewal to be woven into my writing.   But my hard thing, it is back in chapter one.  It is in the destroyed, the broken, the unloved, the alone. 

I believe in a God who makes all things new.   I believe that there is nothing beyond His redemptive power.  I believe that He is at work in my life and your life, working all this to the good of those who believe in Him.  I believe it.  But I don’t always trust it.  There are chapters of story, segments of life, where this finite mind has not yet noticed the hand of a loving Saviour at work.  

I think that’s why I haven’t been able to write the hard thing.  I don’t want to leave fragments of story that don’t point toward redemption.  Because this is the “for you are not my people, and I am not your God” part of the story.  Because chapter two hasn’t been written yet.  And even if I promise to blog a review about it, God says I don’t get an advanced copy.   I don’t want to leave people with a narrative that doesn’t denote the redemptive, restorative grace of our Lord.  I don’t want to leave me with that narrative, staring into the abyss of a story with all these loose ends.  Because what if it ends there?  What if the second chapter never gets written?  I believe that God will make all things new, but do I trust Him to actually do it?

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?  The world would split open.”

-Terry Tempest Williams “If Women Were Birds”

Maybe it’s time for another permission slip to myself.  To speak the truth and let the world split open.  To stop hanging paintings over the holes in the plaster.   To strip away fanciful writing.  To stop hiding behind metaphors.  To recognize the power in the naming. This doesn’t have to be beautiful.  It just has to be true.  It’s not my job to find the redemption.  I don’t have to wait for the renewal or create the restoration.  Just expose the brokenness and let God do the rest.

If you’d like to be apart of this extraordinary community of women who will push when you need pushing and hold you when you need holding, who will speak new life into your writing and your living, then you’re in luck!  Registration is now available for the next Story101 Session.  Check here for more information and to register.    

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