Sometimes we can feel as if we are walking this journey of life on our own, but Carol Kent and Thelma Wells' devotional reminds us that we always have someone else to relate to. Find comfort in these stories written by a variety of women and take delight in the grace that God gives you each and every day.

He Knows My Name

by Thelma Wells

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

Chinese Proverb

My mother was little more than a child herself when, at age seventeen, she gave birth to me. Not only was she young, she was crippled and unmarried. In scribbled handwriting, from the back room of my grandparents’ home in Dallas, Texas, she wrote “Baby Girl Morris” on my birth certificate. However, she called me “Thelma” after the midwife who helped deliver me. Later I assumed the distinctive last name of “Smith” from my biological father.

It wasn’t until I applied for a passport to take a trip to Panama that I encountered a real problem, when all I could produce was a birth certificate that read “Baby Girl Morris.” I had to spend $175 in a court of law to buy the name I had used all my life.

Not many women can say, “I was a girl without a name,” but I meet women every day who have no idea who they really are. It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to say (and write a book with the title) Girl, Have I Got Good News for You!

The aspect of sharing God’s love with women that I most enjoy is helping them regain their self-esteem. I get so excited as I am able to “midwife” them into an understanding of God’s role in erasing the baggage of shame and guilt they may be dragging around. I tell them, “You don’t have to live with silent, private guilt all of your life. What may have happened in your past is over and should be done with. It’s history. You can pack your guilt and shame away in a box, use duct tape around the edges to seal it tightly, and put it in the trash where it belongs, because Jesus wants you to bring it to Him.”

And after I have delivered this good news, I tell them they have a new name. They are not a nobody; they are not a generic Baby Girl Doe in their Father’s eyes. He calls them by a holy name. They are blessed, redeemed, and precious. They are His lambs, daughters of the King, His bride.

I paid $175 for a piece of paper that says my name is Thelma Wells. Jesus paid with His life, on a cross, to give me a new name written in the Book of Life. Today I happily and legally go by the earth name of Thelma, but I know my true identity. My heavenly name is Daughter of God, Beloved, and Forgiven.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Isaiah 43:1 ESV