The Question What Are You

He was seven the first time and he did not understand that it was a question about him.

A woman in a store, friendly, crouched down to his level, and said: what are you, sweetheart? And he said his name, because that is what a seven year old thinks is being asked, and she laughed and said no, honey, what are you.

He has been asked about six hundred times since. He has counted the shapes it comes in: what are you, where are you from originally, what is your background, you have such an interesting look. The last one is meant as a compliment and is the worst of them because it cannot be answered at all.

He has a paragraph now. It is about four sentences long and it covers his mother's side and his father's side and it lands on a joke, and he can deliver it in twenty seconds without thinking, and by the end of it the other person is usually satisfied and he is usually somewhere else entirely.

Forty three years old. The paragraph has been in service for about twenty five of them.

You know that question. Maybe yours is not about heritage. But somewhere there is a thing about you that arrives before your name does, and you have a paragraph for it.

Say what the paragraph costs, and do not make it a gift

There is a way of writing this that turns the in between into a beautiful bridge, and I am not going to do that.

It has cost him first meetings. Twenty five years of them. In most people's lives a first conversation is about what you do or where you live; in his it is about what he is, and by the time the paragraph is finished the tone of the exchange is already set and it is not his tone.

It cost him his own name, which is the small brutal detail from the store. He answered with it and was told that was not the question.

And it costs him something at family gatherings, which nobody would guess: he is the one who is asked to explain the family to itself, because he is the one who has had to have the paragraph, and that is a job nobody assigned and nobody thanks him for.

You have been answering a question about your existence since you were seven, and God has never once asked it. Psalm 139:16 says His book had your substance written when there was none of it, and His Spirit is the one who takes substance off a page and puts it on a man of forty three at a shoreline table. The naming was finished before anybody in any store had an opinion.

A chosen generation, and what a naming actually is

There is one line built for a man with a paragraph in his pocket.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.1 Peter 2:9

Let the Holy Spirit hold you there a moment. Four categories in a row and every one of them is a naming rather than a description: chosen, royal, holy, His own. And they are not handed out on the basis of heritage; the letter is written to people scattered across five provinces with about as mixed a background as it is possible to have.

And the last phrase is the one for the store: called out of darkness into light. Called, which is a word about a voice using a name, and the same Spirit is the one who makes called land on a man who was told at seven that his own name was not the answer.

You were named before you were asked, and the naming did not come out of anybody's category. That is not a way of dressing up not belonging. The written word gives four namings in one verse to people with no common ancestry, and the Spirit is the one who makes chosen something a man can carry into a first conversation.

And I want to be careful, because this site would be a cruelty otherwise. Nothing here tells you that being between things has made you wiser or more interesting. It is not a gift and it is not a calling. And nothing here says that oddness is who you are, because a man whose identity is not fitting has simply let six hundred strangers name him after all.

What this does not change

The question comes again. Probably this month, probably from somebody perfectly kind, and this article does not give you a better paragraph and is not trying to.

What can change is the order. At the moment the question arrives first and you answer it from nothing, which is why it takes twenty seconds and costs what it costs. There is a naming that arrived thirty six years earlier, and it can be the thing you are standing on while you deliver the paragraph or do not.

You have a naming that came before the question, and no answer you give in a store has ever added to it. 1 Peter 2:9 gives the four namings to a scattered people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a written line into ground under a man of forty three.

One plain sentence before we go on. If the question has started to land somewhere heavier, if there are hours where carrying on is genuinely a question, please tell one real human being today, and if it is urgent, call your doctor or a crisis line first. That is not weakness. That is God sending help with a face on it, and reaching for it is obedience rather than collapse.