Sunday, June 6, 2010

What’s In a Name?

I’ll bet you’ve guessed that our two little girls in Eastern Europe were not originally named Mallory and Peach, and if so, you are correct. For many reasons the children on Reece’s Rainbow are often given aliases and such is our case.

Mallory’s name given to her by her parents means bitterness. I felt sad for her parents when I found that out. I tried to imagine their shock and sorrow when the child they waited for in a happy state of anticipation was born with Down syndrome. In their culture, there is no place for a child like Mallory. There is no support for parents who want to keep a child like her.

Bitterness... an intense feeling, perhaps a combination of sorrow and anger, causing sour bile to rise in the back of one’s throat. I will never know how hard it must have been to turn away from Mallory, to sign her life away to strangers. But I can understand her parents marking her with a name that encompassed all that they felt.

She will keep her first name. It is the only thing she has in this world that belongs to her. She is three years old and knows her name. I would not take that from her.

As for Princess Peach (there’s a whole lot of Mario in our house ;-) her given name means holy. I wonder if her parents knew that, if they intentionally named her with that meaning in mind. My guess is that they were told she was going to die. Maybe they knew that to put her up for adoption was to give her a chance at a life-saving surgery. Maybe they pray for her everyday.

Soon Peach will have a chance to live, and soon she will reborn with a new name.

9 comments:

To Love Endlessly said...

how interesting @ your girls' names. How exciting they have each found their forever family!

the van den Berg blog said...

We pray for you and your family and for Peach and Mallory that they will be home with the Godsend family soon.

Rochelle said...

Thanks for listing your prayer requests, gives us the specifics to be praying for these two cuties for you. Can't wait to see them brought into your family. They will surely be blessed!

hartelijk said...

I'm so thrilled that Peach has a family longing to bring her home, and for Mallory to ofcourse ( Peach just struck me so hard with her need for surgery)
I pray for you all,
and just to let you know your post about how to choose a child just gave me such peace...
We are very eager to start the proces, just have to wait until our youngest is one year old to be able to start the homestudy.
Blessings!
Adriana

Kelly said...

Praying that the process moves quickly and without incident, and, that your little girls are united with you all soon!

DownTownDan said...

So Mallory is not her real name, she has another name, and that name means bitterness? What is that name? Just curious.

Nice little slap in the face from her birth parents - one designed to last a lifetime. To be marked like that and then abandoned is a fate I cannot imagine. It all just seems so needlessly cruel. What the hell is wrong with people?

The Sanchez Family said...

Oh this post breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. I am so grateful to you for saving these precious angels...looking forward to hearing their "real" names! We love Princess Peach in our house too :)

Molly said...

Ah my name means bitter too (as do a few others). But I don't think my parents knew that when they named me. According to google it can also mean "bitterly wanted child". So yeah, I'm going to tell myself they didn't know what my name meant. :-) Either way I was named for my great grandma

TUC said...

Thank you Molly :-) Yes, that is what it means now, bitterly wanted child ♥

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