When Someone Knows Your Name

Loneliness is my least favorite thing about life.  The thing that I’m most worried about is being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me.

     Anne Hathaway

On October 25, 2011, Jessica Buchanan and a colleague were kidnapped at gunpoint in Somalia, where they had come to educate children, and were held for ransom by a band of Somali pirates. For the next three months, Jessica was terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters, held outdoors in filthy conditions, and kept on a starvation diet while her health steadily deteriorated. Negotiations for ransom dragged on, and as the ordeal stretched into its third month, the captors grew increasingly impatient. Every terrifying moment Jessica Buchanan spent suffering in captivity was matched by that of her adoring husband, working behind the scenes to deal with her captors. After ninety-three days of fruitless negotiations, and with Jessica’s medical state becoming a life-or-death issue, President Obama ordered Navy SEAL Team Six to attempt a rescue operation. On January 25, 2012, the team of twenty-four SEALs, under the cover of darkness, attacked the heavily armed hostiles. They killed all nine with no harm to the hostages, who were quickly airlifted out on a military rescue helicopter. 

We listened to Jessica share part of her story this morning on National Public Radio.  It was riveting.  She and her husband Erik Landemalm have written a book – Impossible Odds – detailing the ordeal that both of them experienced with the kidnapping.  We both cannot wait to read it.  

During Jessica’s interview there was one thing she said that quickly caught our attention.  She shared, how when the man who literally scooped her up and carried her to safety first called out her name, she was in complete disbelief.  During those months of captivity no one had once uttered or called her by name.  She couldn’t wrap her head around the sound of it and the fact that he was speaking to her that momentous night.  She thought that she would never hear her name spoken again. 

She thought that she was going to die.  She was ready to give up hope.  She had prayed for God to do something.  She had nowhere else to turn.  If nothing happened she knew that she couldn’t cope any longer.  

But when she finally heard her name she realized for the first time in months that she was finally not alone. 

She was finally not alone. 

How often do you feel alone? 

How often do you feel as if no one else experiences or understands your fears, your pain, your embarrassments, your weaknesses, your challenges, your anxieties, your loneliness?  How often do feel as if no one really pays attention to your needs or concerns?  How often do you simply want someone to listen to you, to acknowledge your story and who you are? 

One of the most frightening things for so many of us is to go through life’s challenges, loses, passages and experiences by ourselves, not knowing if anyone truly understands.  That anyone really knows.  That anyone really cares.  

There was great significance in someone saying Jessica’s name that night.  It began to convey to her that she was going to be safe.  And isn’t safe what we all need to feel, to know?

How significant is it, really, when someone knows your name?  When someone knows your name, your preferences, your joys, your concerns, your story, it can mean the world.  It can mean the difference between feeling alone and lost, forgotten and afraid, and between knowing and believing that we have worth and significance.  And who doesn’t want to be significant in others’ eyes?

Naming, to us, conveys a message of value. It says, 

You are valuable. You don’t have to be lonely anymore because I know who you are.

In the classic 80’s TV show Cheers, the show’s theme song famously went like this:

          Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.

          Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

          Wouldn’t you like to get away?

          Sometimes you want to go

          Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.

          You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same

          You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

We all want others to know our name, because sometimes it feels as if we are up against impossible odds.   That we are in this all alone.  We all need to be heard.  We all need to be known.  We all need to know that we are not alone.  That we belong somewhere.  That others are aware.  That they do truly care. 

What a soothing, healing gift that can be, when we are rescued from our loneliness and called by name from our darkness.  It begins to deliver us back into the light again.  

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

     Mother Teresa

Photo by Des Récits on Unsplash