Trusting “I Am” With It All (19/40)

As hard as it is to believe, my oldest child, Eden, turns eight tomorrow. I keep a picture on my night stand showing the first moment I touched her cheek after she was born following three days of labor. I like being reminded of the moment she made me a mom. We had carefully selected a name for her, a child of promise following a dark time in our lives when we moved back to Atlanta from Peru. We wanted part of her name to reflect the joy of the memories we took from Peru, so we chose “Graciela,” which in Spanish means “the grace of heaven” to be her middle name. After a short search, we came upon and chose “Eden,” which means “place of pleasure and blessing,” to be her first name. And the Lord gave me this scripture for her:

And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your soul in scorched and dry places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. (Isaiah 58:11 AMP)

And she has been our Garden of Eden, a pleasure and blessing to our hearts and lives for these eight years, where we have never been without the Grace of Heaven in our home. God also gave me a single word for Eden while she was in my womb: Mighty.

Eden’s siblings, Elianna Jeanne and Esaias Toy, have very specially chosen names as well. Elianna was due on February 27^th, which happened to be the one-year anniversary of a sincere, spiritual turning point in my life that was an answer to a lifetime of prayer. So we found the name Elianna, which means “The Lord has answered our prayers,” in Hebrew. And we gave her my middle name, Jeanne, which means “God is gracious.” God gave me two words for her while in my womb: Humble, Gentle.

Esaias’s name is the story I enjoy telling the most. While pregnant with “Sai,” as we call him, my husband and I took a Mediterranean cruise for our 10-year wedding anniversary. We visited Barcelona, Marseilles, Sicily and Rome. In Rome we toured the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. We had not yet decided on a name for our baby boy, but we felt that it should start with an “E” like his sisters. While standing beneath the beautiful ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Alex and I looked up at the same place at the same time and noticed the fresco of the prophet Isaiah under which was his name in Greek, “Esaias,” then looked down at each other and said, “That’s his name.” “Esaias” means “God saves.” So we also decided to give him the middle name “Toy,” which was the name of the pastor that led Alex to salvation in Jesus Christ. God gave me three words for him while in my womb: Strong, Powerful, Authoritative.

When it comes to names, I fully believe that God is in the details. If He writes our names on the palm of His hand, then surely our names are personal and have meaning, just as God’s name does:

God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am”; and He said, “You shall say this to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” Then God also said to Moses, “This is what you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Israel), has sent me to you.’ This is My Name forever, and this is My memorial [name] to all generations. (Exodus 3:14-15 AMP)

To me, “I Am” means, “I Am the Lord of your heart. I Am the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, all-pursuing God. I Am the God of your past, your present, your future. I am the God of your parents and their parents and the God of your children and their children. I Am the sovereign God who calls you by name. Forever.”

I am a very detail-oriented person. So I am often tempted to try to take details into my own hands and manipulate them according to my liking. I like to be in control, of myself, of my surroundings, sometimes of others. I realize that this is not God’s plan. “I Am” is the God of the details. And it’s His job to attend to them.

God shows me daily that this is the case. One way He does this is through the numbers “9” and “27,” which are my birthday (September 27^th). Every day one way or another, that combination of numbers shows up, whether I happen to look up at the clock at exactly 9:27 or see it in a sign or a phone number, etc. Every day. It’s how I know God, my God, cares about the details in my life. He calls me by name (and knows what day I was born!). So I must conclude, if I can trust God with the little details, then I can trust Him with the big ones too. In fact, I can trust “I Am” with it all.