a rose by any other name...

no. i'm not trying to say i'm on the same level as shakespeare.

a name...what IS in a name? i look at my sister's names and think, "Betsie. Corrie. Ten Boom. pretty noble heritage." i take a look at the meaning of mine, "full of grace" and realize, i am exactly as i've been labelled.

but there's so much more to our identity than our simple naming.

i've read several things lately on this...
one of these is a book, Circle of Quiet by Madeliene L'Engle...amazing woman. amazing book. if i wasn't so set on being the best annetta He created me to be, well, i would simply want to be the next great Madeleine. she speaks of our identities...of the things that happen in life to negatively create an aura of our identitites that just isn't true! we believe so much about how people interact with us, about things we see others doing...we see and hear and internalize all the different messages and come up with a distorted view of who we are created to be.

in Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell says,

"I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy. My therapists said it was clear that there were significant numbers of people I was spending a significant amount of time working to please and that my issue was a simple one.

I was anticipating something quite profound and enlightening as I got out my pen.

He said this: 'sin.'

And then he said, in what has become a pivotal moment in my journey, 'Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.'

wow.

i'm here.

praying He stops nothing short of working out His created purpose in my life today...

being the best created annetta i can be,

annetta