Lynn

She always called me "Sunshine." 

We didn't meet, not officially, until years after my smile was gone, but still, she called me Sunshine. 

Lynn was my middle school science teacher, and we hit it off immediately. We shared many of the same interests, and she was able to put her passions to work in my heart and help me develop some of the gifts that I didn't even know that I needed at the time. Gifts like public speaking. (As an atheist child, I would never have imagined I would later use this gift in ministry.) 

In my early years, I was known for my smile. Everyone was always talking about what a happy kid I was. No one could have imagined the cares that were weighing on my shoulders. 

But by the time I met Lynn, it had been years since I had been smiling. Life had taken its toll on me, and for a dozen reasons that aren't really important to share right here, that smile had been wiped firmly off my face. 

Yet, there must have been something.... 

Almost 30 years have passed since middle school (hard to believe, I know, but here we are), and I'm in a place in my soul where I'm known for my smile again. Someone at work recently accused me of always being happy-go-lucky, always smiling, always in a good mood. I laughed a little and told her no, I'm happy-go-blessed. 

But I have that thing in my soul back. It wasn't easy. It wasn't pretty. The darkness that I know, I can't unsee, but the way that God wove my heart together is stronger than all of it. And there is at least one person in the world who never stopped seeing it, even when it was deeply buried by grief and trauma and pain and insecurity. 

Lynn. 

I never understood why she called me Sunshine. It's a strange thing, but would you know that all these years later, she still does. We occasionally have the opportunity to run into one another, and every time, without fail, I'm immediately Sunshine. I still have the little gift she gave me that one time that I merited a reward trip through the school - ice skating and lunch at Planet Hollywood. Lynn bought me a little piggy bank and on the bottom, it says, "You are my sunshine." She later gave me a pillow that says the same thing; I still have that, too. 

Somehow, in a time when no one else could see it and when the world seems to have forgotten and when I was too weighed down to even look in the mirror and see it myself, Lynn continued to see that sparkle in my soul and to call me by it. To make it part of my name even at a time when I was doing my best to be invisible. 

It's because of her that I remember to remind others of the same - of the things they can't see, but are so true about them. Of the things that God has woven into their souls, even at a time when it's not particularly manifest. Lynn is the reason I look for ways to remind others of who they really are, no matter what life is throwing at them in this season. 

Because she has so faithfully reminded me of who I am.