Receiving a New Name

There's over 7 billion people in the world right now, and that number just keeps climbing every single day. With that many people walking around, you'd think there wouldn't be much left that all of us actually have in common. But there is one thing.

Everybody has a name. It doesn't matter where you were born, what language your family speaks, how much money anyone has: somebody gave you a name. Most of us don't think about it much. You've had your name since before you could talk, before you had any say in the matter at all, so it just feels like it was always there, attached to you like your own hands or your own face. It's easy to forget that a name is actually something given to you.

At Rehema Home, many of the children arrive with a known name. It was given to them by a parent, an aunt, or a grandmother; and someone who can share it when Rehema Home becomes part of their story.  And when that's the case, we leave it exactly as it is. Joshua, one of our adults who grew up at Rehema Home, has a different experience.

Joshua came to Rehema as a little boy with no family that anyone could find or contact. He didn't come with a name, because there was nobody left standing who could tell us what it was, or if he'd ever even been given one. That means when he arrived, somebody at Rehema Home had to make a decision. They looked at this small boy and gave him the name Joshua, meaning to rescue, deliver or save. That was 23 years ago.

Now, Joshua is a grown man. He has his own life, his own friends, his own ID card with that name printed right on it in plain letters like anybody else's. When people meet him, nobody stops to ask where his name came from. Why would they? It's just his name. It works exactly the way any name is supposed to work, it's what people call him, it's what he calls himself, it's what will probably end up on every important piece of paper he signs for the rest of his life. I think that's the part that's easy to miss if you don't stop and actually think about it.

Most of us just assume a name comes from your parents. You picture two people sitting somewhere, maybe before you're even born, going back and forth on what to call you, picking something that means something to them. That's the “normal” story.  At Rehema Home, for kids like Joshua, there is a different “normal”, but it has its own beautiful story. 

Receiving a name isn't just paperwork or a box to check off. It's the first real thing they're given at Rehema, the first decision made specifically about who they are. And once that name is given, it doesn't stay temporary. It's not something waiting to be replaced by a "real" one later. It becomes the real one, right then, the same day it's given. Joshua is proof of that, twenty-three years running. A name that started with strangers ended up being just as real, just as permanent, just as much his, as if it had come from anywhere else.