Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: FAITH (strong, confident belief in God) (02/26/15)
-
TITLE: Name Game | Previous Challenge Entry
By Fiona Stevenson
02/28/15 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
Our parents were missionaries and I would love to say we grew up somewhere exotic, like perhaps the slopes of Katmandu, but we didn’t. It was a relatively modern town in rural but not darkest Africa. There was a hospital, schools and shops, our homes were built of brick or stone and we had electricity. Most of the time we had electricity although in the storm season we were subject to sudden blackouts which could last for an hour or a few days.
The five of us travelled to the same school in the little Mission bus. Grace and Faith were usually seated before Mother and Joseph together managed to get Joshua and I organised and to the bus where Father or Mr Barry tut-tutted, waiting. It was mornings like yesterday that had Mother wishing I was more like Faith, when she told me exasperatedly: “You really do work tribulation, don’t you?” She blamed Father for having chosen my name, Patience.
Mother chose the boy’s names and she really got it wrong. Joshua was the older one and he walked round with his head either in a book or in the clouds. (Although he once told me that it was his feet that were walking on the underside of the clouds while his head had a bird’s eye view of the earth. That was Joshua for you.) Joshua taught me to read and shared his books with me. We did a lot of things together. Joseph was the doer of the family and he spent a lot of his time rescuing Joshua and I from the wrath of our parents. I think he and Grace had a lot in common, although Faith didn’t get into scrapes like Joshua and I did.
It might not have been obvious to the parents who seemed to think that she was perfect, but Faith did have problems. When faced with a new or unusual situation Faith was the original “I can’t” person. I wouldn’t have bothered with such a namby-pamby but Grace did. Well, I suppose she was Faith’s sister, after all. She explained and coaxed, offered her hand to help, and picked her up when she fell down. Once she had Faith passed the hurdle she smiled and clapped as though it was all Faith’s doing. I sometimes wished I was more like Grace who really lived up to her name while it seemed I was the opposite of mine.
I sometimes wondered why parents chose certain names for their children. I know that some names are family names, and I suppose mine was in a way because I was named for my father’s aunt who apparently lived up to her name and was often described as a real saint. What is a real saint? At our school there were children who were named after film stars or other famous people. Perhaps that was why Mother chose Joshua and Joseph for her sons: they were famous men in the Bible.
But Grace and Faith, and even my name really, were not persons they were ‘attributes’. When I thought about it I really didn’t like being an attribute, I would rather be a person like Father’s aunt even if I didn’t live up to her example. I determined that when I grew up I would be very careful about choosing a name for any child of mine. Not that I was planning to have any children any more than I was planning to get married. But it seems to me that these weren’t things you automatically planned to do. At some stage in life they just happened, like accidents and you just had to put up with them and do the best you could.
These were things I thought about when I had questions Joshua couldn’t help me with. He said I would understand when I was older which was a very unsatisfactory answer.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
God Bless~