{"id":9370,"date":"2017-05-16T13:06:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/?p=9370"},"modified":"2017-05-16T13:06:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:06:44","slug":"hello-your-name-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/2017\/05\/16\/hello-your-name-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello, Your Name Is&#8230;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am terrible at remembering names.\u00a0 Ask anyone.\u00a0 Remembering names is my Achilles heel.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know why, either.\u00a0 Of all people, I&#8217;m someone who should know that names are important.\u00a0 After all, my name is Shannon.\u00a0 That name isn&#8217;t unusual, of course, unless you&#8217;re a boy like me.\u00a0 When I was younger, my grade school and middle school classmates repeatedly (and sometimes painfully) reminded me that Shannon is typically a girl&#8217;s name.\u00a0 \u00a0And yet, despite years of torment, my inability to remember names persists.\u00a0 It&#8217;s bad, too.\u00a0 Here are a few embarrassing examples:<\/p>\n<p>-Before we were married, my wife Erin and I were out to dinner.\u00a0 I guess I had been showing signs of not noticing details about her\u2014or something like that\u2014I can&#8217;t remember.\u00a0 Anyway, at some point during our conversation, she asked me if I knew her middle name.\u00a0 I instantly knew I didn&#8217;t, but I guessed anyway.\u00a0 Bad idea.\u00a0 (That night, she also asked if I knew her eye color and then closed her eyes.\u00a0 That little quiz ended badly too.)<br \/>\nAnyway, back to the names\u2014<\/p>\n<p>-As part of my full-time position at St. Peter Church in Fulton, MO, I teach music part-time in the grade school.\u00a0 For whatever reason, I have a very difficult time remembering the names of all of the pre-schoolers.\u00a0 It shouldn&#8217;t be such a problem as there are only about twenty of them, but there are four or five I couldn&#8217;t name right now if I had to.\u00a0 I&#8217;m fairly certain the other pre-school teachers know this about me, but are nice enough not to keep it to themselves.<\/p>\n<p>-A few weeks after my nephew Chase came into the world, I was at a family get-together.\u00a0 One of my cousins was commenting on the undeniable cuteness of the new baby.\u00a0 That cousin then asked for the name of the little one.\u00a0 I had no idea and had to admit I had no idea.\u00a0 That one was pretty bad.\u00a0 Luckily, my sister knows me well and was pretty forgiving.<\/p>\n<p>I really got thinking about all of this when I saw the clip below from &#8220;Jimmy Kimmel Live&#8221;.\u00a0 Take a look\u2014<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MmWWoMcGmo0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In telling this amazing story, Mr. Kimmel goes out of his way to name the medical professionals and family members who cared for his son and their family during this ordeal.\u00a0 I was struck because my wife, Erin, is a Nurse Practitioner in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.muhealth.org\/services\/pediatrics\/conditions\/neonatology\/\">Neonatal Intensive Care Unit<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0I know how hard she works and how much she cares for each and every patient.\u00a0 I also know that hers is a largely nameless (and sometimes thankless) job.\u00a0 While I&#8217;m sure Erin is mostly ok with that, it was awesome of Mr. Kimmel to cast a spotlight on this awesome work done by truly amazing people.<\/p>\n<p>It stirs something in us to hear our name said out loud.\u00a0 Our names have real power and significance.\u00a0 Jesus knew that to be true when he changed Simon&#8217;s name to Peter, which means &#8220;rock&#8221; (Jn.1:42).\u00a0 Jesus knew that to be true when he called out to Saul just after a flash of light knocked Saul off of his horse (Acts9:3-4).\u00a0 Jesus knew that to be true with regards to his own name, telling his disciples: &#8220;If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.&#8221;(Jn.14:14).\u00a0 Jesus also knew that to be true when he appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection.\u00a0 Mary had an entire conversation with Jesus before she recognized him.\u00a0 She only knew it was him after he called out her name (Jn.20:14-16).<\/p>\n<p>We all need to remember that a person&#8217;s name can (and often is) a deeply embedded part of who they are: a loved and called child of God. \u00a0I, for one, will try to keep that in mind as I meet people in my day-to-day life.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">I am terrible at remembering names.\u00a0 Ask anyone.\u00a0 Remembering names is my Achilles heel.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know why, either.\u00a0 Of all people, I&#8217;m someone who should know that names are important.\u00a0 After all, my name is Shannon.\u00a0 That name isn&#8217;t unusual, of course, unless you&#8217;re a boy like me.\u00a0 When I was younger, my grade&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/2017\/05\/16\/hello-your-name-is\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,88,91,51,21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-jesus","category-jesusjusticejoy","category-quote","category-reflection","category-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9373,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370\/revisions\/9373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}