It’s National Adoption Month! I wrote an article for the November issue of CCM Magazine:
When my wife Casey and I first received the picture of Mahelet, the little girl we were adopting from Ethiopia, we cried. Then we smiled, laughed and cried some more before jumping online to find out what this strange but beautiful name meant. You see, I’m a sucker for the deeper meanings, roots and origin of well…basically everything. (I mean, I’m the only guy I know named after the late great Georgia Peach, baseball player Tyrus Cobb) My wife found the answer first and said, “Mahelet means ‘Gift to God!’” WOW! That’s perfect!
A few months later we boarded a plane to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to get our daughter and finalize the adoption. While in Ethiopia we asked a few friends and locals if Mahalet truly meant what we thought it did and we consistently got a couple of other answers. It also means “a deep form of praise to God” and it’s the name of an instrument used in praise and worship music. But it turns out that wasn’t the end of our search for the meaning of Mahelet. We’ve been home with “Mahi” (yes, like the fish) for over three years now and the layers of what her name mean continue to unravel… | READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON CCMMagazine.com (go to Page 8!)