Tag! You’re It!

We have all played tag as children –  naming our playmates the oh so powerful “It.” I often wondered where that title came from. Why “It”?  But I guess in a child’s world “It” can encompass a great many powers and roles. 

Some of us learned just how fast we could be as we tried to avoid becoming “It.”  Avoiding the labels that others would place on us – and the responsibilities for keeping the game going that went with them. (Have you noticed that trying to avoid something usually makes you run right smack into it?)

This month I am participating in blogging 101 to try to encourage myself to write more consistently. The daily assignment is to rethink your title and tag line. Since I’ve already explained my title – and how it changed- on my About page, I’m going to address my tag line – and how it represents my effort to stop running away from being “It.”
“Learning to Reengage” is descriptive of what I needed to do when I began this blog. I spent ten years immersed in a doctoral degree, working full time, and raising my children with my wonderful husband who sometimes works away from home. The children learned to do everything around the house for themselves, my husband waited longingly for me to find any shred of time to focus on our marriage rather than my other endeavors, and I lost sight of my own heart.  

You see, I was running hard to get away from labels I though others had placed on me and after labels I thought would make life perfect. Neither tactic worked very well and both left me extremely disconnected from just about everyone that truly mattered.  So reengaging seemed the most important thing I could do with this unexpected and extended time with “nothing” to do. 

I have learned that “nothing” is as full of something as I choose to make it. I have learned that trying to feel like life is normal only leads me back into the labels I never wanted in the first place. And I have learned that some labels that I was taught to shun were actually the very things I needed in my life. 

To be fair, My attitude about it has not necessarily been what it should be, but thanks to my husband, I am learning the power of speaking life into people and situations that can otherwise become a guillotine of emotions and circumstance – set to lop off action and life at a moment’s notice – like the linked arms of RedRover teams.

I am also learning that the re- may be a misnomer, because I am not sure that I ever knew how to engage in the first place. But I will leave it for now because it still has the feel and emotive impact I hoped for when I began. 

I am still learning not to run away from being “It.” And I am learning that “It” can be just what the Great “I Am” calls me to be.  And if God can pick a funny name for Himself – why wouldn’t He choose a silly one for me?  After all the Word tells us that if we want to enter the kingdom we must have a heart like a little child.

So — Tag! You’re It!

Matthew 18:3-5

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