unsettling peace

When I was in first grade, my family went to Disney for christmas. We stopped at a little kiosk in one of the parks where they sold mugs on which they would write your first name, and the other side would be a brief description of your name’s origins and meanings. My parents got one for each my sister and me.

According to my mug, my name is rooted in the name Katherine, which is Greek for pure. It was nothing more than a fun trinket, somewhere to keep my pens, until I started counseling after my engagement/marriage ended.

My counselor had had a professor who taught him that what we call ourselves is important. He asked if I knew what my name meant, and I told him: Greek for pure. He asked what I thought about that, being named Pure. I started crying — purity had been taken from me at a young age, had never really felt like a choice. It’s not one of those things you can really get back. A marked page is permanently stained.

He patiently heard my explanation, my self-hatred, my shame. He let me mourn for a moment before defining my name as he saw it: I may not have purity of body, but he saw a purity of heart that radiated from me. A purity that resides within my soul. A purity that cannot be stained or even tainted.

His definition gave me the grace to re-claim my name. I no longer had to hate that part of myself, no longer viewed ‘Kate’ as a mocking burden to carry, but rather as a blessing to live up to.

I hadn’t thought about that interaction for some time, until class last week. I’m working on my Master of Divinity, having moved across the country following the call of a God who I know only well enough to know I will never understand. I cry daily because I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m supposed to be here, but as for what I’ll do with my degree… I’m lost. I fight with God daily.

The session with my counselor came back to me when my professor (who was, years ago, my counselor’s professor) was retaliating against a student’s criticism, and threw out “blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the pure, blessed are whatever…” and continued on his argument, but I had stopped listening. Blessed are the pure. Blessed are the pure of heart. That’s me. What is the other half of the blessing?

I turned to my Bible and looked up Matthew 5: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.

I’m unsettled about seeing God, but I at least have the peace of that blessing, which had been waiting to surprise me from the most visible of places — my own name.