Grace given.

I went from one really hard to say last name to a different hard to say last name.  My maiden name, for those of you who don't know, was Delinski. I know how to spell it out with the distinct cadence I had heard my parents use over and over.  "DEl....IN...ski.  It is pronounced Duh lin ski."  OH just like it looks!  Yes, just like it looks.

My Uncle has often joked that he is going to start a sandwich shop outside of a ski mountain.  He is going to call it simply, Deli 'n' ski.  We all laugh as the joke hits and it is a great pun.  All of this training prepared me for bearing the name:  Ansorge.

It looks easy and is less letters.  You'd think there'd be fewer problems, right?

Wrong.

My Grandmother in Law has a collection of junk mail with her favorite misspellings of the name.  Ansorage, Ensroga, and on and on.  It is amusing the variations.  The biggest issue, though, is that the family insist on the Austrian pronunciation of the name.

In English it looks like AN-sorj.  You know, g says j before i and e.  BUT in Austria, where the name is from, g's infront of e's say guh.  So, to meet Grandma's approval you say, AN-sorg, even though this goes against everything you learned in kindergarten.

ANs...Or...Ge.  I'm sorry it isn't phonetic, you say it AN-sorg, hard "g."  They stumble a few times as their eyes still want to read it the other way, but then they get it and we move on.

I have friends that have known me for 15 years and still don't say it the way I just explained.  I don't correct them.  It'd hurt their feelings and would be hypocritical.  Before I knew the difference, I said it wrong too.

This name has taught me grace.

People make mistakes.  People say things the wrong way.  People do things the wrong way.  Many times it is a simple mistake made on past and sometimes correct information.  We can stand in our rightness and scream, "YOU DON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY!!!"  Or we can look at the lessons they have learned in the past, see them as Jesus sees them, and gently help them see what we see.