on being afraid of my own name

sitting in a room warm with the bodies of four hundred women, and so afraid that i'd be the only one. the one who didn't "get a name". petitioning jesus for a glimpse of our true identity, we were asking him to bestow new names. his pet names for us, if you will. they gave us a little rock to write it on, and we waited.

{pause.} i will be the first one to be incredulous about this. always the skeptic, i doubt and doubt and doubt. doubt he is there, doubt he is speaking, doubt he loves me like they say, doubt myself in my  ability to hear and understand the workings of my own soul and his voice in me. and i doubt the authority of others speaking, too. i am not the one to get caught up in bieber fever or celebrity or televangelists or sensationalists. so when i find myself at a conference where it seems the God of the universe is actually speaking to MY HEART, i listen. lay aside my fears. hope a little.

hope with me? {end pause.}

so i wait, only a moment, and i hear him say BRAVEHEART. i immediately reject this because, well, that's a boy name.  i must've heard him wrong. made it up 'cause that's what i wanted him to say... (oh, wait...) i started writing "names" i knew to be true of me because of previous revelation, his word, other books that spoke... "my beloved", "bride", "beauty"... after the session, i was asked if he'd given me a name, and i said, "not really...?" at which point a woman looked deeply into me and said she saw "sapphire", with a description of the stone's beauty and its gold settings and all things that shine... i took it as mystery, and left that cold colorado morning with a little awe, a little confusion, a little disappointment that i hadn't heard directly from his heart. (wha...?)

it took almost two years before i decided to accept this name as my own. and many more months before i could tell anyone about it (as in, right now). afraid it sounded unbiblical, or at least unorthodox... afraid of sounding pretentious... afraid.

braveheart, afraid. this is less of a contradiction than it seems, as has been often observed.

        "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not
          he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela

        "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part
          coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave." - Mark Twain

so, although i assented to the name theoretically, i have not been living it. i am so bound by fear. so many fears. last night, i started listing them and my fingers flew until i drifted off to dreamland. SO. MANY. i am Much Afraid. but that's not what he says. and he's usually always true.

this has been surfacing more and more as i see fear affecting my relationships, my parenting, my work, my art, my relationship with God... he whispers, and i say "but i'm so afraid". tears fall, but i don't move past it, breaking down walls, finding the beauty, truth, and goodness on the other side...
especially this month, as i've been a part of The Art Journaler community advent experience, art journaling consistently for the first time, it's come out. i've seen the fear for what it is, and accepted the call to bravery...

so my One Word for the year is BRAVE. living out my truly bestowed identity. trusting and hoping, and all manner of brave things.

hello, 2013, i am braveheart.