Labels Lie

I follow an organization on Facebook called People of the Second Chance. Just the name moves me. Their campaigns, posts, blogs, and photos challenge me every day. As I’ve said before, I like to think I’m a non judgmental person. I believe I am, in most cases. I say most, because I know I don’t have all my bases covered. There are still large patches of me that are bare, as yet uncovered by the grace I’ve struggled so long to accept.

POTSC’s latest campaign, Labels Lie, caught me with its raw, grainy photos of people stamped with a label over their faces, obscuring who they really are. This is me. Was me. I was labeled with a teen pregnancy, and I’ve felt the heavy weight of that stamp ever since. I always qualify my situation, to head peoples’ judgements off at the pass:

“I was already engaged, the wedding date was already set. There was no shot gun wedding. I never slept around. I married the only man I ever slept with.”

Somehow, the qualifications make me feel more guilty. Next month, it will have been nine years since the day I sat in the doctor’s office having my world shaken, my life forever changed. Nine long years of feeling the grime of my mistakes coat me like oil.

Slut.

Cheap.

Easy.

Disappointment.

That girl.

I never wanted to be her. And yet I became her, more through my perception of myself than anyone else’s. I’ve turned it into a hateful joke of sorts, calling myself out before anyone has the opportunity to do it for me. “I was a model child. The worst thing I ever did was get pregnant out of wedlock.” With a background like mine, that’s about the worst thing a girl CAN do. Drug addicts can be rehabilitated. Alcoholics can be set free. A girl who gets pregnant? Well, she’s stuck with that mistake forever, now, isn’t she? And serves her right, too. She knew what she was doing. Knew the consequences.

Labels lie. I’ve lied to myself for nine years, seen myself through this dark filter that I’ve accepted as my cross to bear. I earned it, after all. No matter that my son was born perfect and healthy, and lights up my life. No matter that my life has been restored, my husband loves me, my family doesn’t judge me or shun me. The good things, the grace, I never earned, and, more truthfully, never accepted. The mantle of humiliation, I’ve wrapped around me tighter than my skin. I’ve embraced the label, tattooed it upon my heart, when others long ago gave it up.

Labels lie. I lie. I lie to myself every time I say I’m not a judgmental person. When I say that grace is freely given and freely received. Because the truth of the matter is, I’ve labeled myself more fiercely than anyone else has ever labeled me, more harshly than I would ever presume to label another person. I’ve written upon my own face this label, and I see it whenever I study the mirror, whenever I look into my heart, and at times, even when I look into the face of my son. I’ve never, ever freely received any grace, accepted the truth. Instead, I’ve believed and perpetuated a lie about who I am based on what I did.

The truth is, I am whole.

The truth is, I receive forgiveness and embrace grace.

The truth is, I am exceedingly and abundantly blessed.

The truth is, I am made new. Not just restored; completely new.

The truth is, labels lie.

And I choose truth.