Ezekiel

"Lauren, how do you sign all of your blogs?" Jacque asked me between the sobs on my end of the phone line.

"Ezekiel."

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It's been a rough week. Low grades. Short deadlines. Bad news. And to top it off, I've forgotten my calling. I've forgotten why I do what I do: why I blog, why I write, why I testify publicly about what God is up to.

I've forgotten that I am Ezekiel.

Very few have heard this story. In fact, I think only Ashley, Amanda and Tom have heard it in its entirety. I don't like telling it because it makes me sound conceited and holier-than-thou. But I think if I tell it now, it may make sense of everything I've been talking about the past four years.

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When I was a sophomore in high school, I read every book John Eldredge has ever written - mostly. I had read Wild at Heart, Captivating, Waking the Dead (4 times that year) and the Sacred Romance (3 times that year). One of those books, and I do not remember which, talked about that verse in Revelation about God giving us a white stone with a new name written on it (Revelation 2:17).

Eldredge wrote that if you prayed and asked God to tell you that new name, He will. And I believed him. (I believed everything Eldredge wrote.) And so I prayed.

During this particular time, I was getting over a crush, one that had lasted the entire summer before. This boy was moving away, so I was a little heartbroken (ah, to say the least). One night I was praying and reading my Bible and I came across this passage:

God's Message came to me: "Son of man, I'm about to take from you the delight of your life—a real blow, I know. But, please, no tears. Keep your grief to yourself. No public mourning. Get dressed as usual and go about your work—none of the usual funeral rituals." (Ezekiel 24:15)

No tears. I thought that was the greatest advice I could be given. I felt a kinship with Ezekiel - as bizarre as that sounds - because we were both losing someone important to us.

That was in August.

By February of Sophomore year, around the time Tom let me preach on a Sunday morning (I was proudly the first girl to preach in front of my church, holla!), I began praying even more for this white stone. I remember sitting outside in the cold during Sunday school - Tom's idea, not mine - and feeling a slight nudge that maybe my name was "Ezekiel." Maybe that's what my white stone said.

In July, during the camp-from-hell, I wrote in my journal that I was pretty sure I was Ezekiel because - and please pay attention to this - why would I WANT to be named a prophet?

A

Prophet's

Life

Stinks.

It totally does.

Isaiah had to run around naked. Jeremiah got thrown in jail and had to wear a yoke like an ox. Daniel was kidnapped from his home, plotted against, and thrown into a den of lions. Ezekiel had to lie on his side for a couple months while eating food baked over his own poo.

This isn't a fool-proof method, but typically I know God is the one behind something if it's 1.) awesome, but I 2.) don't want to do it.

Somehow God confirmed all this on our mission trip that summer. I don't quite remember how, but I remember pulling Tom aside to tell him.

Since then there's been more progression and specifics to what this calling means exactly. Just note that I am a journalism major for a reason.

--

So this is why I sign my blogs "Ezekiel." (Or "Ezek." which is ol' Ezekiel's nickname. It's pronounced EE-ZEEK, for those who don't know any better.)

But, this is also why I don't censor my blogs.

I didn't notice this until Jacque and I were talking to other day about how I think I've made RELEVANT magazine mad at me for blogging about them, ahem, too honestly. Because even though I want to intern with them (and I do), I'm not about to throw my convictions away either.

In hindsight, I should have kept my mouth shut about the more recent RELEactivity, but I wrote about the fields dying back when the fields were dead. I wrote about Kevin's thesis and the plowshare and everything in between when I thought God was calling me elsewhere.

As a prophet, as God's mouthpiece, I can't pick in choose what I want to tell the exiles. That's not really in my job description. I write about what God is teaching me: this is why I have labeled more blogs "Christianity" than anything else.

There's certainly some discretion on my part. My blog called "Dear Sex" has been on and off my blog several times only because I'm not sure if it's profound or just ... sad.

I guess all this is to say that I have forgotten what my calling really is. And that's bad. But I'm back. I'm ready to be Lauren "Ezekiel" Deidra Sawyer.

And no one else. ;-)

with Love and Squalor,

Ezek.