My Name on a Stone

It’s my first post of the new year, and traditionally I’m sure I’ve written something about resolutions and one-word, yearlong themes. Dang — we Christians have really latched onto those one-word themes, haven’t we?

I’m not saying I don’t have any resolutions or themes for 2020. But I’m also not ready to declare them just yet with the confidence of one Michael Scott.

Instead I find myself looking backward to start this year, as I often do throughout the year. And yet in the looking backward I also find myself looking forward — though not exactly forward to 2020.

I traveled to Pennsylvania for Christmas, my first trip there since Ahh died this summer. My grandfather’s gravestone wasn’t chiseled until just recently, so this was my first time visiting it. Seeing it.

It was the first time I’d ever seen my name on a stone.

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I’ve said it numerous times of my family, and I need to repeat it to myself often: I’ve been blessed. Some guys don’t even get the chance to know their grandfathers, let alone have them tower them among their spiritual heroes.

For me to have reached my thirties before I lost Ahh — before I lost anyone, really — is a blessed thing. So many years of laughs, adventures, hope, and wisdom gleaned from the great Ahh.

It was strange rolling back through my grandparents’ gravel driveway — is it just my grandma’s driveway now? — with him no longer there to greet me. Strange to open presents on Christmas morning with him no longer sitting on his “throne” in the corner.

So much new empty space. A tangible vastness in that house replaced by a stone in the earth, two miles down the road.

A stone with my grandfather’s name on it.

A stone with my name on it. The first time I’ve ever seen ZUNIGA written on one.

How foreboding.

How foretelling.

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Revelation 2:17 speaks of a future timeline when certain souls, the “ones who conquer,” will receive a stone. And not just any stone, but a white stone — a white stone with his name on it:

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. (ESV)

The first time I ever read that passage, it felt like something out of Narnia. Something wildly mysterious that stirred something in me — stirred it enough that I wrote an entire novel about it.

I swear, one day, I’ll publish that thing.

New names on stones — what a magical concept. I can’t stop thinking what mine might be. I’ve long had fantasies of going by my middle name, Mark.

I love that the whole name is one syllable long, both a noun and a verb. I also sense pen stroke connotations as a writer.

Mark. So concise. So multifaceted. So declarative. So sure of himself.

As one prone to passivity, how I crave to be marked and named by a newfound boldness.

I cling to the hope of one day seeing such a name on a white stone. When graveyards full of grey stones are crumbled and forgotten. When my old name turns to dust.

As 2020 kicks off, I see my name on a stone and feel my mortality like never before. I remember my grandfather’s face and I swear the sand in this hourglass is escalating.

It’s a dark way to start a new year, a new decade, perhaps, but I want to make the most of every grain of sand. My grandfather’s name on a stone does not represent a sadness or hopelessness. Does not even represent death. Points instead to life. A name full of joy — family, friends, and a faith like few I’ve seen.

I don’t have an official one-word theme for 2020 just yet. But I do want to be bold in all I set out to do this year — whatever it is I ultimately set out to do.

I want to make more of my mark in this life this year. More pronounced and confident and hopeful than ever before.