Glory!

This week we welcomed our new daughter, Glory Rose, into our family!

We chose the middle name Rose because it is feminine, strong, and complexly symbolic. (My favorite association is the “multifoliate rose” that Dante described when he envisioned the structure of heaven.) Her first name was one we considered for Mystery, and came back to again after ruling out the other name finalists: Jubilee, Evidence, and Generosity.

So what brought us back to Glory?

Glory is a many-faceted concept. Primarily it refers to God’s supreme beauty and worth, the celebration of which is the purpose of all creation. It includes His holiness, wisdom, and power. One reason for her name is to remind us that if we seek God’s glory above all lesser attractions and distractions, we will also receive our own greatest joy and satisfaction. It also is a prayer that our daughter’s life will glorify God and magnify His grace and goodness. Her life verse is 1 Cor. 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Our living kids’ names are a testimony of His messages to us as we conceived or adopted eighteen beautiful souls. We chose the name James William to honor our fathers; Valor, as we learned to value character, service, and sacrifice over achievement; Grant Perseverance, as we relied on Him for faith amid trials; Mystery, as we admitted how His ways are higher than ours and set our hope on the reality of “Christ in us.”

Glory’s name is a shout of praise and victory over our sixteen years of struggle against infertility, disability, miscarriage, and loss. “Glory” feels like God’s epilogue in our family’s story, the final chapter of the book, the last verse of a song reaffirming that He is good, that He is powerful to save, that He loves us, that He hears and sees us, that He will do what He will do in His perfect wisdom and timing, and that in the end, He does all things well and far better than we could ask or imagine.

Her name is an exhortation and encouragement to remember that God is really everything He claims to be in His Word. For all the times we choose defiant joy, trusting Him in spite of the circumstances. For all the times we choose to worship God even when we cannot understand why He takes away what we love. When we cannot see where we are walking by faith, but we determine to be obedient and keep walking anyway. All the times we trusted that He was working all things, even the painful things, for our good. He really was. He really does. It’s impossible to see it at certain points, and that is when we are tempted to believe the lies that God doesn’t care. But He does. He is at work, and He is making us into the image of Christ as He grows our faith. And it is all so, so worth it.

All that is what we want to echo in our hearts when we say…Glory!