In A Name

   "The Lord is watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil and the good." Proverb 15:3

  I heard someone call someone else, "It." 

  This exchange is weighing heavily on my heart, triggering the memories of when I was treated as one, too. No one ever called me this to my face. They didn't have to. Neglect, disregard, and oppression drove home the lesson that I was sub-human and not worth the air I breathed.

  On top of all that has happened this week, my health has taken a hit and is struggling to fight one of the many viruses that are floating around. 

  I was talking with my friend about what happened and came to realize of all the names, of all the insults humans have to fire at each other, this one is not about how someone is behaving. 

  I and T together are two letters that suffocate the light of another person's existence. 

  Even if IT is only in our thoughts! Merely thinking IT of another human being warps our perceptions of just how valuable that person is to Jesus.

  Decades ago, I spoke up...one of the very few times I ever did...when my ex brother-in-law referred to his current girlfriend multiple times in a row as, "It." 

  He was standing, leaning against the kitchen counter with a never-ending beer in his hand. I was sitting at the table. My first reaction was shock that he would even use such a name for her. Then I leapt up. I didn't shout or scream. I simply looked him in the eyes and used my momma bear voice...low, succinct and projected. It was my serious, line-in-the-sand voice that would make my children sit up and take notice.

  "She is not an IT! She is a person! I never want to hear you say that about her again." 

  He was very surprised because he had never seen me as angry as I was. He never used this term within my hearing again. However, if he used it about someone he was supposed to love to the point he actually proposed to her, for sure my ex used this expression as well. They were two peas in a pod who saw women as objects, as sub-human. 

  The girlfriend said, "No." They broke up shortly after. 

  God intervened and got me out of there not long after all this took place.

  Like so many years ago, I intervened yesterday. It was all I could do to remain calm and in control even though I was transported through time to the kitchen at the farm. God enabled me to remain present enough to deal with what was happening in the moment. 

  I am a peacemaker. It is part of who God calls me to be. If it takes a momma bear voice, I give thanks that God gave me one and the insight to use it as needed.

  I'll say this, though, I hate flashbacks. They are extremely powerful memories. They come without warning. The scent of beer filled my nostrils yesterday. It hasn't completely gone away yet.

   The hardest part is remembering my own inner self from those days. How I felt. Who I thought I was and the lies I believed about myself all climb aboard the flashback lightening bolt. You literally become who you once were through the force of memory.

  It takes time to recover, to un-remember these things because God has poured new life into me over the last couple of decades. I am not the same women I was sitting at the kitchen table.

  Maybe I need to pay her some honor today. Despite feeling like an invisible woman, I spoke up against what I knew was wrong. Despite being so afraid all the time, I said something to my ex brother-in-law.

  And yesterday? Even thought the flashback nearly overwhelmed my mind, I spoke up because it mattered.

  Girl? God was with you at the farm. He was with you yesterday. And will be with you through all the tomorrows yet to come. 

  AMEN!