Put a label on it? Maybe you should cut it off.

Hey friend,

I get it.  Maybe it would have been easier if they'd stuck a label on you in the form of  a diagnosis.  I can understand  why the 'rents ran from that.  They knew, at some level, that a label would limit you.  It would put you in a room.  It would you in a corner.  It would put you on a path.  Doors would be closed.  Dreams would be shuttered.  Damage would be done.

What they never knew.  Perhaps what they didn't want to know. Or admit about themselves.  And other Christ followers.  And people in general.  Maybe it's a human trait that goes all the way back to Adam and Even and the naming. 

Like so many other things, the naming of things was a tool once given, and the  tool that took us over.   Understand, sometimes, labels are necessary, important, healthy, and even life giving.  In the education and health professions,  labels are the beginning of a triage process.  Sorting,diagnosing, understanding, preparing, responding, and treating all come in response to a process shaped by labels.  And labels can be a spring board into all sorts of learning and conversations.  They can be.

But if we're honest.  Most often, they're not.  Because when you label me, or when I label you, I'm putting you in a box with other with other similar shapes.  And then, sadly,

Labels limit love.

and

Labels limit learning.

Once I've labeled you, I know you as the "XXXXX" or the "JJJJJJ"  or any combination of recipes.  What breaks your heart? Unasked.  What stirs your passion?  Unknown. The story behind the scar? The person missing from the picture? The secret well? The buried treasure?  The childhood scare.  There's so much of you that I want to know.  You fascinate me.  And there is so much more to know.  Any label I applied would only be the smallest part of you, and certainly not all of you.  And I'm in love with all of you.  Because so is He.

And hey. I'll answer any question you ask. The easy softballs. The tough ones. The ones that ask me to be most honest. And if the answers lead you to label me, so be it. I still love you. But hopefully, they'll lead us to know one another more. Because a part of the Beauty of the Body is that we can share the Beauty we know in Christ, where we know fully, even as we are fully known. And until that time, we'll experience the coming Kingdom as we experience the Body of Christ in one another, honest before God.

thus spake,

me.