a name: Esther

As I am sorting through the SHOW HOPE t-shirts that arrived today (!!!!!!), I am reminded that I meant to tell you all about the name. Esther. Charlotte and I had that name tucked away for a long time now. Back when I read aloud to her regularly, we read through ALL of the American Girl historical books. She completely loved them and I would recommend them to anyone looking for great series books. We could hardly get through the Addy books. Sometimes it just breaks a parent's heart to have to teach a child about history. Addy was a slave girl and the books were very accurate (age appropriate). At one point, in one of the stories, Addy and her family have a chance to run for freedom with a group of other slaves. In order to protect the group, the baby of the family - Addy's sister - had to be left behind. Her name was Esther. We cried. And for those few chapters before the resolution of the book, we were horrified. This just stayed with us. We had imagined that she might have looked like Ella (Charlotte's cousin) and imagined that if we ever adopted, our new sister might look like that too. And we are, and she will be, and she is Esther. And of course, there is that other Bible story of the courageous, life risk-taking, God-honoring, God-obeying, people-saving awesome Queen Esther ;).

Someone gave her a name. She will always have that name. We will be adding this name. We know kids who stick with the given name, go with the new name. As far as I know, there aren't any rules :), but we'll do what works best for her in her transition.

I'll be getting your shirts to you this week. If you also ordered Youth shirts, I'll wait to get those and give you yours all together. Hopefully that will be this week too!