I have a friend named Sylvia. I was her ministering sister in Lancaster for several years. Alan and I both helped her out a lot. She needed a lot of help because she was a single mom trying to raise her two youngest children when I met her. She had been married three times and had six children. Each of her ex-husbands was a deadbeat dad who didn't support her financially, so she didn't have any money. She is from Mexico, but came to the USA as a child and is an American citizen. She speaks good English, but still prefers Spanish. This is a picture of her with one of her grandchildren.
One time, I took her to a car repair shop to pick up her car. My memory is foggy, but I think I helped pay for something and she was grateful that I helped her out and she asked how she could repay me. I told her that the only thing I wanted was for her to call me by my first name. There...I said it out loud. I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn't. After that, she mostly continued to call me Sister. She might have used my first name a time or two, but I'm not certain.
This lack of using my first name got me thinking about how important our names are to us. Our name is our identity and sets us apart from everyone else in the world. Calling someone by their first name is a way of validating that individual. Our name is part of who we are and by Sylvia not using my first name, even though we were friends, really kind of hurt my feelings. I wanted her to recognize me for who I am.
As you can tell, I still struggle with it to this day. Maybe I'm being too sensitive about it and I just need to move on, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put this behind me. Since we live in different states, we don't see each other any more, but we do occasionally speak over the phone. I still consider her my friend and hope she is living a good life and is making ends meet now that all of her children are adults living on their own.
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