Growing up, I hated my name.
It was difficult to remember.
Always, I was last in class to make friends. I hated it so much that I took the chance when I was transferred to a new kindergarten, to start afresh and told everyone my name was “Christine”- unbeknownst to me that it was prophetic, since it meant Christ-follower.
I might have been only five, but I’d heard the story of my birth:
“It’s not a boy.”I imagined the air cracked like a mirror, frozen in silence, my mother saying “Let me see for myself,” pregnant with disappointment.
I was my mother’s last child. A surprise after 8 years of persistently trying for a second. From an ancestry that treasured boys so much that generations went so far as to adopt boys as their firstborn.
The doctors had promised my mother that I would definitely be a boy.
Definitely.
A week ago in Africa, on the way to far rural villages in Eswatini, my new Swazi friends and I talked about names- how rich African and Chinese names are.“So, Sibusissiwe (my Siswati name, meaning ‘we are blessed because of you’)-so what does your name mean?”
“Mine was a back-up name. I was supposed to be a boy.”
Silence.
“How about your name, Nonhlanhla (pronounced Nong-kla-kla)?” I asked my Swazi team lead. “It means ‘lucky,’ – my parents felt lucky they finally had a girl.”
I sat in the car, quiet, as we went over potholes. The uncanny contrast hung over us like a curtain.
“So, going back to the question- what does your name mean?”
“In Chinese, 蔚 (Wai) represents the majesty and splendor of the skies, and 佳 (Jia) represents goodness.”
“That’s the back-up name?”
“Yes,”‘I stuttered out. But I found my voice to say, “ Five years ago, when I was in the States and had just obeyed God to start a ministry called Kitesong Global, God spoke to me that my name 蔚佳 had always been a part of His plan. That my life’s mission was, like a kite with a cross at its center, to display His goodness (佳）like a banner across the sky（蔚). “
“Oh my. Wow.”
Today as I turn 35, I am reminded that my life, like yours, is not a mistake.
For all the years of shame I carried because I was born a girl, because I had a difficult name- God knew.
For all the years I felt suffocated with shame because I never felt smart enough in medical school, and never became the eye surgeon I wanted to be.
This year, God knew I’d spend my birthday in the heart of a little village in Eswatini. As if He had planned it from the start, He took me and placed me away from all I had known to show me who I really was.
What once caused me pain and shame- “I am not the person I thought I was supposed to be,” for the first time, brought me a deep, wholehearted joy.
The same line-seen in two entirely different ways, because God renewed my lenses. I did not become who I wanted to be.
True… but God had a better way.
Today, if you’re in pain because of your past, if you feel the sting of shame burning, would you, like me this year, look back, sit with your shame and ask it questions, quietly and curiously.
Where did you, Shame, come from? What story did I write about you? How did you affect my life?
For it is only when we reconnect with our shame, call back the broken parts of “me” and re-story our lives, can we move forward with a whole heart.
As I turn 35 and straddle the tension between past and present, brave and scared, strong and struggling, I see clearly now how He reclaimed my name from ruin to redemption, how He has rewritten my life of shame to shine.
In the past year, I did not become a surgeon, but He propelled me to be a global health consultant in humanitarian crisis.
God knew this age would need the exact intersection of my gifts- gifts woven through the same pain and loss I once rejected. I was not born the long-awaited boy but I became a proud mother of two daughters. Two daughters, who, are waiting to come to Africa to join me in God’s mission.
In the past year, I became one of few women preachers on the pulpit, and my firstborn says, “Mama, I want to be like you, too.”
I did not become who I wanted to be but God had His way, a better way.
Let not another year go by before you ask God what your name means, what destiny it holds, how He’s redeemed it, how you’ll reclaim it.
For His story is not over until it’s good. You are loved, beloved. 
