I’ve been encouraged by several people to actually blog more and to share lessons from our adoption journey. I promise that this blog won’t be completely about adoption but so many faith lessons that can be applied to multiple situations were learned through adoption.
I wanted to share the meaning and story behind our daughter’s name. I’ve loved the name from the moment that I heard it but how God displayed Himself through it is unbelievable. As soon as we started to trying to build our family, we had a girl name picked out. We had assumed that our first child would be a girl so imagine our surprise when we got the call about our son! We quickly chose the name Matthew, “gift from God”, which is fitting because we brought him home on my birthday.
Alora Kay was the name that we had in our hearts for nearly 9 years. During our infertility journey, I had a really rough day and took a nap on the couch. I had a dream of a little blonde headed girl on a swing wearing a hot pink puffer jacket. It was so vivid that it was almost real. A few weeks later, I actually found the jacket in a store and bought it. I decided to look up the meaning of Alora and it’s African for “my dream.” Put it together with my middle name (and mom’s middle name) and you get “My dream rejoices.” The fact that it is an African name is so special because shortly after my husband and I met, I went to Rwanda for 10 days. We communicated ALOT during that time because there was no way I wasn’t going to talk to him after just meeting (needless to say, the phone bill was expensive that month!)
When we found out that we were matched and it was a girl, we immediately knew what her name would be. When talking with the attorney, we learned that Kay was a family name for her birth family. After the mad dash to the hospital, we walked into the nursery to meet the little girl who would soon be our daughter. She was a tiny little thing with blonde hair. The next day, my husband and I were sitting in the NICU and he looked over at me and said, “You do realize that she has blonde hair? The dream of the little girl on the swing??” I was stunned. Things happened so fast with our match and her birth that I honestly had not even thought about that. We later learned that Alora also means “the Lord is my Light. “ We couldn’t have picked a more perfect name.
I was beginning to think that the dream of having a little girl (or even a second child) was never going to be a reality. I had forgotten about the dream, but He didn’t. I was losing hope but He saw the bigger picture. Yes, the dream came true but every time I look at our beautiful blonde headed miracle, I see God’s promise fulfilled and one of the most tangible evidence of His faithfulness.