She Wants My Name

She wants my name.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  I agree, Sir Shakespeare, but when has a rose feel the earnest, soul longing desire to be known by name?  Being known gives life. Being known by name gives identity, be it in renown or infamy. Your name is known, therefore, you are known.   

I changed my name only once and it was a sign of commitment and love. The commitment and love are not just in my covenant marriage to my soul mate, but also because it required a full day off of work and four hours in the buzz of fluorescent lights of a government office just to hand a form to a person behind a desk. In the changing of my name I did not lose my identity but increased it.

My little curly headed beauty and her little sister were in another home just merely one year ago, promised forever and a new name.  In reading her story, she had expressed excitement at her new name.  She learned the order of its letters and began to identify with its title and the people with whom it was also associated. Months of promises were broken in a selfish instance. Her name remained the same and again, she is moved.  

This time she requests not just the last to change, but the first as well.  She chooses a name for herself. She is five years old and chooses a new name, a new identity and helps her sister choose one as well. The justification of her selection- "it sounds like a princess' name."  Little does this young soul know that the name she has given herself actually means “devoted to God,” a prayer her daddy and I have lavished on her soul long before we knew of her existence.

They find themselves in another home, fourth in a year and a half, the second to promise forever and a new name. She learns another sequence of letters that would complete the new identity she has created. It's written on her folder and on her backpack even though the state has not recognized it legally. She is excited and bonds to her new name only to have its promises fractured just as the first.

When she comes to us, she is unsure of which name to claim.  The little one clings only to her first and is adamant that she no longer identifies with the former.  Her last name is of no significance. I scratch out the old names and leave only “Devoted to God” on all of her things.

One evening, we sit them down and ask if we could give them our name. My curly headed beauty beams with excitement as if she’s never tasted the bitterness of broken promises.  My littlest simply accepts with a skepticism she must have inherited from me. Yet another name to be memorized. She identifies it in books and signs.  She asks with anticipation when it will be her name for good, but behind those eyes of hope lingers the scars of doubt left by the promise breakers.  She knows the weight of a name. She knows that a name can bring belonging.  She wants to belong, to be known.  

I've had a lot of names, Mama.

One day I won’t have different names.

One day I will have your name, Mama.

Yes, sweet girl, you get a new name, but there is truly only one name that matters.  It’s the name that is above every name.  At this name, every knee will bow and tongue confess.  By this name, your wounds are healed and your soul secured within the book of life.  This name claims you and knows you.  This name is everlasting.  There is only one name, my precious girl, that I desire to flow from your lips and cling to your heart.  This is the name to which we continue to pray you and your sister will devote yourselves.

Your daddy and I are delighted to give you a new name but long for you to know the one who gives you new life.
Jesus.