What's in a name?

A note on the names around here. Just clarifying something. Our family does nicknames for our girls, they have real, beautiful, southern names. But 've decided only to call them by their nicknames on our blog. I want to share our family, share this journey, but sharing only nicknames feels safe, yet still personal... Ok back to the name. We affectionately call our new baby, Pearl. Many people have asked me "Will you call her Pearl?" We know part of Pearl's real name, and we are thrilled to be naming her after Rainer's grandmother and I love thinking about the day she will meet her namesake, but we will wait to learn her given name to know her full name.  God's love is so in the details, and in His goodness He has given us this sweet nickname to call our baby. Nickname does not sound near grand enough. Can I call them love-names?  Anyways, let me explain. We have prayed about adoption for years. When we really began to press in and seek an answer or confirmation from God about our third child I asked God to make it abundantly clear who this baby would be. Girl or boy, biological or adopted. I believe God is a relational God, who speaks and guides us. So I talk to Him often and have developed a faithful expectation that He will answer. If you think I'm crazy, you should just try it.  He delights in fellowship with us, and He is always speaking, we just have to listen.  We prayed, we worshiped and we waited in expectation of what He would reveal, knowing that, as Rainer reminds me often, God is good all the time. Well speak he did! I was in a powerful place of worship in November of 2011.( It was November 19th to be exact, a historic day for us always, as its our dating anniversary and the day we got engaged) God spoke to me and showed me the most beautiful picture of a perfect pearl seated safely in an oyster shell. A symbol of my daughter, a jewel of great worth who would be discovered. A jewel who's beauty is known first by its finder, possibly admist the muck, where others might have overlooked. A jewel that I would know as mine, that we would be the ones to discover and draw out her beauty. He would keep her safe and nuture her, until we could. I wept in joy, amazed that God would call us to adoption and toppled over with thankfulness that I knew, that I knew that I knew our third daughter was coming not from my womb, but from the other side of the world.  I told Rainer that I had heard something about our child and asked him to pray and let God confirm and tell him the same thing he had told me. He shortly heard that we would name our daughter after his grandmother....His grandmother's name, so just happened to in some translations mean Pearl.  Now that is God's beauty in the details. So, Pearl she is, our sweet, completely unique, formed like no other, Pearl. A rare beauty, a pillar of strength and wisdom.  In the following months as God worked to show us His timing for our adoption I read more and more about Pearls in the bible. Did you know that the gates of Heaven are made of a single pearl? That is the worth and value He has placed in my youngest daughter! She is His pearl, a symbol of the always open gates of Heaven, given to us, bringing joy and healing to this earth. And I get to be her mama? Whoa, humility.  For this mama she is truly a jewel in my crown. A piece of heaven to me.