When people talk about me, what do they say? I have come to the conclusion that people are talking about me far less than I think they are. Seems I am the only one who thinks me so important. But when people do talk about me, what do they say? Oh, that is Abby she is…..?

There are so many things I want to be. A good teacher, (the teacher to some, the one that made the difference), a great mom and wife, a published author one day. All of those things plus the more general terms, kind, honest, funny. I hope people say that too. I hope those labels stick to me like the stickers on my food packaging, like the stamp on the milk container.

There are so many labels out there labels within labels even. Not just mom, working-mom, stay-at-home-mom, crunchy-granola-mom, attachment-mom, ferberizer (I know, really, it is a thing. I didn’t make it up.)

And as a christian, Oh Lord, how we love our labels. I am a fan of telling people about Jesus. I pray for people to meet my savior. If that is evangelism, am I an Evangelical? I believe that the bible is fundamentally true, am I a Fundamentalist? I speak in tongues and see visions, I have occasionally dreamed dreams. Does that make me a Charismatic? I was raised a Disciple but now go to a Baptist church, was baptised in a Disciples church but now take my discipline in a Baptist one. What does that make me? How do I identify myself? What does it mean?

What if I didn’t care? What if I peeled off all the other labels that I and others have attached to myself, wiped clean all the sticky residue, and printed off a new label. Black on white in bold, 40 point font. What if I stuck it straight onto my chest: Jesus Lover.

What if I lived my life in such a way that the only way to talk about me was to talk about Him? “That’s my friend Abby. She loves Jesus.” If I stopped spending so much time worried about if I am doing it all right, and simply concentrated on loving Jesus, what would that mean for me?

Oh to be a Jesus Lover. To think all day everyday on loving Jesus well. To do the dishes and the grading, the laundry and the driving hand in hand with my savior. I wouldn’t spend so many minutes worried about what a good mom, wife, teacher, friend, does. If I failed at one of those it would be okay.

Those are the things that I do. They are not who I am. I am a Jesus Lover.  I love Jesus. Put it on my t-shirt tomorrow and my gravestone someday Abby Norman: Jesus Lover.

If this was where my story began and where it ended, if it wrote everything in between. What a beautiful story it would be.