A few years back, I was training my leadership team at the time for the upcoming school year and what their job really looked like. Leadership teams are always very diverse. If they aren't diverse than there is a huge gap that allows narrow-minded perspectives to royally screw the overall point of leadership-- that's another tangent. One of our biggest goals was to understand our team and allow our team to understand each other including their bosses.
One of the training sessions was "what's in a name?" I might be making up the title but for this purpose it doesn't really matter. The point of the exercise was to understand where our names came from. We wrote our names on a huge white board and shared. At the time, I didn't really understand the point of the exercise. With most things, my approach is humor. I took the assignment with stride and turned it into a joke. Sharing what my almost name was. Based on other team building tasks, my team understood why it was an ironic thing.
Although, I didn't feel like I had anything worthwhile to share, my team did. I learned so much about them. Some of them knew the heritage to their names, some were named after great influences in their family, some came from cultures where names meant things. I felt really blessed to hear what their names meant and I'm glad I learned that there was more to the exercise than what I could have imagined.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure I was naive. The meanings of names source back to the ancient of days. When reading the bible, I always take note when a name is mentioned followed by the meaning. It is everywhere.
This is where my struggle begins.
I have been aware of what my name means since I was a wee little one in missionettes-- t's like girl scouts for christians. I remember at my graduation into my next level, or some type of ceremony I was given a card that had my name on it. In big bold letters, "Samantha" means "listener."
I took note and found it a great reminder but also a great struggle. Looking in my prayer journals I would write words. "I just want to hear God's voice." "Let me be attuned to discerning what is God's voice." The pleas continued. For the most part, I felt like I understood God's voice. I could hear him, sometimes audibly. I could feel his presence allowing me to know that I was where I needed to be. I knew when I needed to be more discerning that there is usually always more than one door or road to take.
Nothing new under the sun really.
But I think I've come to realize why I often times struggle. My name and it's meaning. It engrained in me, it flows in my veins. I used to want to be someone else. I would tell people my name was Jasmine or Arial, sometimes Sarah. I'm not really sure where Sarah came from. But now, I wouldn't want any other name. I want to be what my name means. I want that to be who I am. It's important to me. I want to be that girl who understood what her name meant for the very first time.
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