Known

Yesterday, I shared the story of my almost-famous almost-moment, and I admitted that it sounds kind of arrogant, selfish, and adverse to God's glory to be caught up in a moment like that.  But it doesn't have to be.  Not when I became keenly aware that even my almost-moment was still not about me.

It wasn't about being famous, as fantastic as that fleeting feeling can sometimes be.  It was about being known.  And the thing about being known is that it both frees you and drives you.  It frees you to stop trying to be something somebody will notice because you've been noticed just as you are, and your heart leaps with joy.  That is enough.

And it drives you to be someone worth knowing.  Instead of driving you out of yourself to keep up appearances or prove something, it drives you into your heart, where Christ resides, and invites you to find that thing within you that is worthy of being you.  You know, that thing God nested in there when He created you.

At least, that's the case for me.

It's hard.  I mean, I've spent most of my life as largely a nobody trying to be a somebody, trying to figure out what I could be to get someone, anyone to notice me or even say my name.  There have always been plenty of people around and yet, I have always found myself isolated somehow.  Feeling like I haven't felt in.  Like I haven't had a place.

Then someone dares almost yell my name in a Wal-Mart, and it opens up this giant space for me.  It opens up this hole into which I am able to both rest and grow.  It gives me a place, somewhere more than "down by the deli," where the woman happened to see me.

It is a place called Aidan, a place that it seems so easy to forget exists.  When you're out to prove yourself, to be something maybe the world is looking for in you, when you're trying to figure yourself out and create a place, you start kind of shapeshifting and figuring out what you can be to fit in whatever hole you can find in the world.  Whatever place you might squeeze into for the chance to be something.  And then by name, Aidan.

That place...is simply you.  It is simply where you are with all that is in you.  With all that was created in you.  It's a comforting place to be, a place all your own where you don't have to transfigure yourself into something more or something less but instead, you are invited to be something whole.  To fill your name-shaped hole in Creation.

Isn't that cool?  That in this giant mystery of creation, God saw fit to form both you....and a hole exactly your size for you to fill with the whole of who you are?  It's incredible.

So my almost-famous almost-moment in a rural-ish Wal-Mart isn't as arrogant as it sounds.  It is for God's glory that He gave me that moment.  So that I would take a breath and settle in, calm down and find my place and remember that I never settle for being Aidan; I am blessed to do so.  Even when things aren't maybe as I would hope them to be.  Even when it seems I should be doing something more, or something less, in this place.  Whatever place I've decided to squeeze into.

But in the place called Aidan, my heart echoes.  Mercy reigns.  All that I have been created to be fits perfectly into this place.  All that God has put in me makes sense here.  I am inspired to be the fullness of that which I was created to be, in blessing and brokenness, in gift and grief, in living, in loving.  Because I just fit here.  The whole of me fills this hole and hallows this holy place.  A little place called Aidan, to which God has graciously called me to live.

It took a moment that never was to remind me what always is.  Not that I am famous, but that I am known.  As God intended.  When I am as God has created me to be, His glory is reflected.

And He is known.