Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name....

Isn't that true? Sometimes we just want to be where we are known. Where we feel safe. Where we can just be free to be who we are. Doesn't really matter how old...or young... we are we all just want to be known for who we are. Sometimes we wanna go where everybody knows our name.

When I was a kid I had a place like that. When I was a kid "home" wasn't very easy. Home didn't always feel very safe. I was a step kid for one, and I never really felt like I belonged in the very confusing home in which I grew up. Home provided the basic needs, sure, and for which I am very grateful. But home didn't feel "right" to me. But school.. school was good. At school I was able to escape the difficulty whether in a class with my peers who didn't care what my home was like or in a book that had no judgement against me at all. I could play on the playground with Shad, and Naomi, and life was good. In class, I could read a book about anything that would take me away.  At school I wasn't the step kid or the odd one out. At school I was just another kid in class. But everyone knew my name. I wasn't the most popular kid but I was also never picked on or teased. There was one time when a younger boy made a nasty comment about the shape of my nose. My nose of all things. He said it looked like a pig nose. It stung a bit and for a long time I didn't like my nose because of it. But what I realized since then, that kid, whose name I don't recall for the life of me, actually called me by name when he made the rude comment.  ha

When I was a teenager things changed a little. Home was still not easy. School time was starting to really be defined by who you were and who your friends were. I had some great friends. Of course we didn't really know at the time that developmental needs of teenagers is primarily about belonging and fitting in. But what I was learning was that even though I had friends at school, and home wasn't great, I was a child of a King. I belonged to God. He took me in and I found myself apart of a bigger family. Youth group started to become a place where I truly belonged. While other friends were discovering drugs and other unhealthy choices, I was learning those things really weren't necessary in my life. In fact, I was having the time of my life with kids who didn't really have time for all that nonsense. We met regularly each week. But then many activities were planned for us to enjoy along with traditional youth group meetings. We did things like bike trips, Cedar Point trips, all-nighters, lock-ins, pizza parties, bon-fires, movie and game nights, camps and retreats. We had fundraisers like car washes and sold Christmas trees to help pay for these things. What I realized is that they did a lot of things to help keep us busy and give us a place to belong. Our youth group had a name. R.O.C.K.  It was a place that I could belong. It was a place where everybody knew my name. That mattered to me. It mattered that I mattered!

As an adult, that place for me was the town I lived in for 18 yrs. prior to moving to my current location. I stayed in the town in which I went to college, Marion, Indiana. It's not exactly a "small town" but by no means is a metropolis. It was funny though because of one reason or another, no matter where I went, I would run into someone that I knew. Wal-Mart was the place to be most weekend nights. We used to joke about the fact that we could pass a plate and have church most times you were there because there was never a shortage in those in attendance from any given congregation. At any restaurant, I would always see people I knew. My co-workers would tease me because they would say I knew everyone in town, it seemed. It's not hard when you went to college at the university in town, attended church with about 350 other people (grown even bigger now), and worked in various schools/agencies within the community. I happened to have known a lot of people.

I am fairly new in town now. Getting to know people isn't as easy as it once was. I attend a church were people don't all live in the same community. My kids are older and need me a lot less in their school and social lives. It makes me incredibly happy when I am in the grocery store and run into someone I happen to know. It's starting to feel less and less of being in a sea of strangers. But sometimes I still want to go where everybody knows my name.