what's in a name?

{first off, how embarrassing that my last blog post was so long ago! i'm terrible at keeping up with this}

Matt and I are just a few short days away from welcoming our FOURTH girl into the world! With all the joys and stresses that come with parenthood, one of the fun tasks that comes with the job is picking out names. We have never had trouble picking out girl names, convenient how that worked out, but our names are just based on what our preferences are and aren't drenched in any fervent meaning...which we're okay with.

I know some people believe the name you give your child, along with its meaning, can set the tone for who they are or what they're like. I'm kind of on the fence about it b/c I believe God shapes who you are along with your circumstances, but am seeing more and more how kids with certain names just seem to fit them perfectly.

As we approached the ultrasound date to find out whether we needed a boy name or a girl name, I happen to come across a girl name that I couldn't get out of my head. With the new discovery, I wanted the baby to be a girl just so we could use this name...and Matt loved it too, so that helped. It was as if God was preparing us for the news of girl #4 with the peace this name brought. Sound strange?

Perhaps, but its a powerful symbol to me and you'll see why.

Many of you know that I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Bangkok in December to minister to girls enslaved in the sex industry. Through the partnership of Freedom 4/24, Brentwood Church and Beginnings, I had the most gut wrenching, eye opening, heart breaking, trust in God like never before, kind of ten days. Those ten days will forever impact me & stay with me, yet I still find it easy to push it out of my mind and forget about it. Forgetting then about the girls, the girls that have to entertain men each night so that their families have food and education back in their villages. I hate that its easy to forget. I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget that passion that flowed through me or the emotional and mental toll it took to just go through another night of outreach. I recently reread through some of the emails I had sent back to people while I was away and came across this line that accurately represents the reason behind our chosen name for baby #4. "God showed me that there is light here, even if its just in the eyes of these girls. It was beautiful." THEY are beautiful. Their beauty lies within who God created them to be. Underneath all their dirt, shame and regret, they are still beautifully and wonderfully made.

I want each of our daughters to know and understand the depths of Christ's love for them and who He created them to be. I want them to know and believe that true beauty comes from within...and be able to search for it in people around them. I want them to grow in knowledge, as they grow older, that the world isn't perfect and their version of normal is not everyone's normal - and I want that to bother them. I want them to ask me why I went to Thailand and left them behind for 10 days. I want them to ask what their littlest sister's name means and why we chose it. I want our little Cadence to understand her middle name and hopefully take on the fight as well when she's old enough...perhaps even have the chance to go stand up for the girls enslaved...the girls that inspired her name.

So with all that said...in just a few days, we'll be welcoming our little Cadence Lawan Cote into the world.

'Lawan' is a Thai name that means, beautiful.