Barkley

Yesterday I was called Barkley. It hasn't happened in quite awhile, but it has happened most of my life. I just walked off laughing because there was actually something a tad familiar about being called the wrong name. I grew up with a girl named Barkley. She was my sister's age. We went to the same church, swam on the same swim team and our parents were (are) BFF. So you can understand how many people would confuse Blakely and Barkley, although I don't ever recall anyone calling Barkley by my name.

There was one person in particular who spent my whole life desperately trying to get it right. He would look at me, think hard committed to not mess up this time and confidently say..."hello Barkley." I would laughingly say, "so close...Blakely," and he would seem defeated by the challenge and move on. Once I'd gotten to high school his daughters, embarrassed, could hardly bear to watch the process and would just tell him before he said hi that my name is Blakely. Eventually he stopped trying and would just say hello. I would say Blakely and he would say thanks.

It made me wonder how often I'm calling God by the wrong name. He's wishing we'd call him by Loving and Faithful or Good and Merciful or Abba and Shield. Instead, I think too often I'm calling him Maybe, Almost or If.

I'm pretty confident things would be different if we called him by his real name instead of his almost names.