A warm welcome to today’s Guest Blogger, Andrea Wenderski, Catholic Coach. Andrea’s message around this month honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a beautiful reminder that we have been called and equipped to live and love like Jesus. Sit back, relax, and listen as we share and cultivate how God moves in and through us as we navigate the many different seasons of a woman’s life.
The Christmas decorations were being put away in boxes, areas being cleared for new toys, and donation bags were being filled with baby toys and clothes that didn’t fit my children anymore. I took a minute to marvel at the last bit of twinkling lights and sparkle from last year and braced myself for a turn of the calendar. A fresh month, year and with it, hopes and dreams of what could be for this year. Thoughts of what I hoped to see change in the year and in myself. A thought, or many on what went very wrong these past twelve months. An even quicker thought of what actually went well and from my perspective went “right.” The temptation to beat myself up is there quickly and shame, its ugly friend present too.
Each year a word comes to mind or is given to me in prayer. Last year’s word surprisingly was fortitude, not exactly one I would have chosen in name or intent, yet it indeed was a year of fortitude. A year of unexpected emotions and internal work that I had not seen coming. A year that felt like preparation perhaps, but mostly pain. It was an unanticipated journey of having my past dredged up and with it a lot of emotions. I never could have prepared myself for it and for how my insecurities were reignited. God created our bodies, and our emotions are telling us something that is important and something to tend to inside of us. Yet, this was an area that I was used to ignoring and burying, until this year I could not anymore. It was walking right beside me. Sometimes our past seem very much settled until something triggers them to come up to the surface.
Last year, I saw someone that was from my past. Although it was surprising at the time I assumed that it would become a new normal and that perhaps all the years of time apart would have healed any old wounds. Surprisingly, it did not, at least not right away and with some internal work. A flood of emotions came day after day, each one attached to a memory good or bad. I began having to recall memories and conversations that I had forgotten due to time and hurt. So many questions were unanswered and confusion on where I stood with this person and what had happened. But what was the most shocking was how it was affecting how I viewed myself. All of a sudden I was transported back to feeling like the little girl I once was, searching for who she was, what she had to offer and longing to feel loved and good enough more than anything. She’d search and search for someone to see her for who she really was, so that she could know for herself and so she could perhaps feel cherished. This person, although completely unintentionally, was dredging up pieces of that girl that I thought were already gone, but there was just another layer of her feelings that had to be dealt with and apparently, that time was now.
Recently, I was watching for the second time, the Chosen series. If you are not familiar, it’s a TV series about the life of Jesus, but even more so the calling of each of His disciples. It’s very relatable, moving and inspiring. One of the many things it does well is show the viewers how we are similar to the people at that time who are trying to understand and follow Jesus. The show reveals each of the disciples’ pasts and how that can impact them or come back to hurt them presently. One of the first characters you really get to know is Mary Magdalene, one of the first people to follow Jesus and travel with him to learn by him. In the series, they show her life in the red light district. You see that she has past traumas right away and that she’s possessed by demons that torture her internally. They even show her as a little girl and although they do not show her whole journey we can see this beautiful faith that she had as a girl. Later in the series you will see her past come back to haunt her. She sees a few people that remind her of her old life, her trauma and who she once was before. The one man calls her by another name, her old name in that life, but not the name her parents had given her. Although she says she will not answer to that name anymore, she feels her past rise up, her shame come back and her worry of what her past could do to her and her friends and Jesus’s ministry. There’s a striking belief inside of her that goes unsaid in the show, but that we all feel, “not worthy.” Her old name, her past, her sufferings, her mistakes, all of it was coming back to call her a different name than Mary, which means, beloved. In the show you see her leave the ministry and go back to her old life for a time. She began believing the lies that we tend to believe about ourselves, that we are unworthy, not good enough, too broken, unlovable and so on. That we could not possibly be something more than our past and our past decisions. Or that we couldn’t possibly be different than how others have seen us or treated us. Mary in that moment was living out of a place of doubt or fear that everything that had once changed inside of her was not really true. She believed the lies and lived out of them and out of the fear. Until one day some friends help remind her of her name again, and even more importantly bring her back to Jesus so she can feel a true healing forgiveness and reassurance of love.
How often do you forget your name? Although I do not have the same struggles as Mary I can relate to forgetting my “name.” My past insecurities had recently brought me to a place of living as the “past me” and forgetting what the present me knows and believes. I’ve found a peace that surpasses all understanding and that includes feeling content in who I am. My worth will not need to be earned any longer, but has been given by God who loves me unconditionally. I recently looked up the meaning of my name. Carla means, “free woman, strong one, or warrior” depending on the area of origin. When I see those descriptions they invoke in me a very different feeling than what I’ve been feeling in the past several months which was “I’m not enough.” It reminds me of a calling placed deep in my heart that calls me to rise up and live free and help others live in that freedom. To help women and men to know who they are and how to find strength and fight even in the midst of suffering. I’m not that little girl anymore who was hurting and out of that hurt was looking to be found, known, cherished and loved. When I live in that “old name” I live in fear and unbelief that God has created me for a purpose and with intention. It’s only when I remember my name again I can live out my calling.
“Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1b
So I’m encouraging each of you to look up your name, or maybe even your confirmation name and see how it may resonate with you, but more importantly, be still with God so you can hear, or perhaps remember, what He’s put on your heart for who you are and Who’s you are. In the stillness, have God help you see who you are, ask Him what He sees in you, and process anything that may be holding you back from living in that name. Let us take off anything left of our old self and remember our name; the name that was given to us long ago. Let us all live with the fortitude God has placed inside of us, with strength of mind, as we encounter pain or adversity and may we do it with great godly courage.
“For God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and of a sound mind.”
2 Timothy 1:7
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