LIE TO ME (THE LABELS ARE ALWAYS TRUE)

I've been exploring lies that I tell myself.  

This is a series of very unflattering self-portraits-

I'm trying as hard as my little overachiever heart can try
to show up in this series exactly as I am.
Not as I wish I were.

This is particularly hard because....

I lie to myself A LOT.

Probably you do too but I'm not supposed to fix you 

so I'm going keep the focus on me while I highlight 
another lie I tell myself.

Here's the lie: The labels are always true.

I have lots and lots of nicknames.

I talked about them in this post called 'Back-handed Compliments'.

I have lots and lots of labels too.

Labels are a little bit like nicknames...

but for the purposes of this post we're going to assume that 

a label has a meaning that is (at least on the surface) 

universally understood by the majority of people.

Labels are impersonal and generally non-specific.

Labels are not earned, they are bestowed.

Some of these labels happen so early,

and so often,

that we don't actually take time to consider their validity.

They just are.

Like a fact except....they're not facts.

Judge a book by it's cover?

How about the label girl for instance...

I have always felt like a girl-

I resemble a cis-gender female,

so...I'm a 'normal' girl.

Most of the humans on earth would look at me and agree.

Yep, that's a female human.

I'm lucky that I never questioned my gender-
or rather I'm lucky that my gender was pretty singular 
and my perception agreed with everyone else's perception of this body.

Not everyone has that luxury.
Getting woke is hard....feel free to dip your toe in transgender issues.
I still have steam where my brain got fried in a recent 
'surface level' breakout session at the Why Christian conference.

Sister is another label that I've had

for as long as I can remember.

I have almost always been someone's sister and

I also have friends that I love like a sister.

That label is an interesting one for me though.

It took me a while to understand what it meant.

As a sister, I root for people, encourage and support.

Sometimes a sister just witnesses, sometimes she brings you coffee,

occasionally she may babysit your children.

A sister does not take on the role of mother.

A sister does not rock you to sleep every night,

cook all your meals, teach you to navigate the world.

A sister is allowed to grow up, grow apart, choose herself.
Even the most dedicated and loving sisters
are not expected to give their life for their siblings as an offering.

For a very long time, I confused this label with mother.

I thought being a sister to someone meant I needed to parent that person.

This was a long lesson to learn and I learned it the hard way.
I hate hard lessons but I sign up for them often.

Mother was another label that was confusing to me.

I thought for a long time it meant to be 

volatile, unpredictable and capricious.

Or, I thought motherhood might be the beginning of mental illness, 

a field of competition with other women or a place of evaluation.

Perhaps motherhood was a prefix or a suffix-

proof that you had reached a milestone.

Is it obvious that motherhood was not a flattering label for me?

 And yet...something in me wanted to reclaim that label.

So I became a mother and began to understood how 
off my definition of mother was compared to most other people.
Turns out, mother means something really rad.

Once I had my own children, I realized why mothers 

had such a profound impact on their children's lives.
Somewhere early in my dictionary,
 the definition for mother got swapped 

with the definition of sister.
And the definition of mother got switched with something else too.

It took me 28 years to get them matched up again.

The gift of seeing these labels being swapped 

has been slowly dawning on me.

It turns out that once you see the lie in any of the labels,

you can start to play around with ALL of them.

They have meaning, and sometimes the meaning gives them power.

Power that they don't deserve-

they're just labels after all.

Who can understand this?

Here's a recent label I've been swapping out:

The GOOD ONE.

I bought this label-hook, line and sinker.

I was the GOOD ONE for so long.

I lived my life by this label-making the 'right' choices, 

staying within the lines,

shoving down anything that didn't seem 

to be rewarded or likeable.

In every relationship where I was an active participant 

who needed to be vulnerable and open-

instead I chose to be the GOOD ONE.

The one who had the answers or could back seat drive 

your life better than you.

The one who (at least in public) showed up to win.

My poor siblings.  They had to find other labels.

The GOOD ONE was already taken.

My poor boyfriends and peers!

And do not get me started on how long and unfair

 this label was for my husband.

(Not that he minded really-he was pretty committed 

for a long time to being the 'bad one').

There is more to me than the GOOD ONE.

It is a suffocating label-to me and to anyone

who has to put up with me.

What does this even mean?

In spite of humanity's deep need to name all the things,

we understand very little of what matters.
A label is a surface description, short-hand for something bigger.

On the best days, labels describe something semi-accurately.

On the worst, labels are used to justify abusive behavior.
or to ignore something more true.

Here's something I've slowly sorted out:

If I'm feeling squished into a smaller and smaller box,

my labels might be a lie.

It might be time to swap around some labels to test it out.

Maybe a person in my life claims a label like 'beloved'

but they are actually 'destructive'...

and I've just not been allowed to say it.
Swapping the labels will feel subversive-but also more accurate.

Maybe someone holds a label like 'boss' or 'leader'

and I need to make sure I'm not 

mis-labeling myself as 'servant' or 'victim' or 'savior'.

Maybe that old friend who's struggled with addiction 

is not 'lazy' or ' a screwup'.

What happens if I switch the label to 'sick' or 'lonely'?

What about the label of 'other'?

Like the homeless person or the brown faced man I pass on the street?

Could they really be 'one' or 'the same' as everyone else?

When I allow myself to shake up the labels

I find that labels are barely sufficient and often wrong.

Lies I tell myself will continue.
In the meantime,

allow yourself a minute of label swapping-

and see if that changes how you'd act or respond.

The labels were made by humans.

The Divine (God) doesn't use the same limited vocabulary
that humans use.
We can rest assured that we are all beloved.
So swap those suckers around until you get to that answer.

What the heck is this stuff?