You Changed Your Name!

What's in a Name?

Now that I have changed my name to Kimberly Dawn, I am forever being asked why. I thought of how we can spend hours deciding what to name our children, our pets and whatever else that we care about, even our car. We pour over the meanings especially when we name our children. We want them to have a name that has a really cool meaning or sometimes we just like the sound of it, or the name is elegant and dignified.

My little mother (she is only five feet tall to my five foot eight) reminds me frequently of how she picked my name. My given name is Kimberly. Apparently my father was not too convinced, but mom hung in there. Being a bit of a trend setter in her day, she always did things a bit out of the ordinary. I would call her creative. I am not so sure that I understand being named after a diamond mine in South Africa but...far be it from me to argue with the one who fought hard to give me that name. (After all, it is better than Kimberly Clark, the Kleenex manufacturer.)

At fifteen years of age, I ran away from home for the second and final time. I needed an alias to go by, so I gave myself the name of Dawn. I liked it because of the beautiful morning sky. Since then I have used Dawn as my first name. When finally reunited with my mom after three years, my mother was not very happy to find out that I had changed my name but had to resign herself to the fact I was now Dawn. I have a couple of those Biblical name cards and the one for Dawn says "The Break of Day" and has the Scripture from Psalm 18:2 "The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer." (which I love.) Mom, on the other hand, loved to tell people (when I would introduce her), "Her real name is Kimberly!" That really used to bug me something fierce.

I have watched my mother climb into her 80's and struggle with her health since her late 70's, and I began to asked the Lord to show me what part I could play in her coming to Christ and have peace in her heart (after all, I pray diligently for her salvation.)  The Lord spoke to my heart a couple of years back and said to just love, serve and bless her. Okay, Lord, show me how because You know how strong willed and independent this little woman is. Unfortunately, as she is aging she is also losing her vision from macular degeneration and because of that she has been forced to give up much of her independence. For those of you who know what I'm talking about, that can be very trying for the one going through it and some other issues that are a bit humiliating for her to contend with. Hey, life can get difficult as we age!


One summer (mom tries to stays with us in the summer months when she is feeling well enough) on the first day she was here she injured her leg exercising her "I don't need any help" attitude. She fell off a counter and gouged her leg up terribly and we ended up in the ER. This became a very unique opportunity for me to do 'hands on' care for 'Miss Independent'. I had to change her dressing twice a day throughout most of the summer. It took four months for this wound to heal! But, in the process, I was able to care for her tenderly with that thing we all love and that is human touch. At one point I even asked her if I could anoint her with oil and pray for her healing and amazingly she said yes! When I was done, she had tears in her eyes and could not explain why. God is indeed up to something, don't you think?


It was fall and my program was beginning it's fifth year and I like to do something new each new year to keep things fresh. So I asked the guys what they would think if I changed my on air name to Kimberly Dawn. (It was such a God thing that I would even go there.)  They liked the newness of it and said go for it. This was a real blessing to my mom and she periodically asks if I am still going by that name and I am always so pleased to tell her "Of course!" The funny thing is that I am actually enjoying being called by that name, as well, although I do not expect those that only know me as Dawn to change how they address me unless they want to. A little side note - my boss and former boss always teased me by calling me Kimberly Dawn now and again. Here is what Kimberly means - "From the Royal Meadow." Nice, huh? And the Scripture is also delightful from Psalm 119:73 (NASB) "Your hands made me and fashioned me; Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments." I just know this is softening my mom's heart and I am believing that God is making a way into her heart where there seems to be no way!


Please pray with me that God will continue to show me ways that I can be Jesus to her and that she will come to know the One Who will never leave her or forsake her and Who will love her with His everlasting love. I am believing the Holy Spirit is wooing her and that it will not be long now for her to take her rightful place in God's Kingdom. And I thank God for bringing me to a place where I would want to be obedient even to the point of going back to a name I did not care for!

National Day of Prayer ~ May 7, 2009

A reminder from our 16th president had to say:

By the President of the United States of America. (this was taken from Dutch Sheet's website at dutchsheets.org)

A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Can we still say we are a Christian nation? It could be that we need to repent of our "independence" and admit our need of the Almighty God before we drift into an abyss of darkness upon going our own way. As it says in Isaiah 53:6 (NASB) (an inditement that we have always drifted from the truth) "all of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way..." But because of the incredible love of the Father for His wayward children, desirous that no man should parish, "...But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him." Father protect us from our own wayward desires for apart from you we can do nothing!

God gives a distinct warning to Solomon as he finished the house of the Lord just as God had instructed him to do (Solomon's palace as well), he then visits Solomon in the night with a specific warning and proclamation:

II Chronicles 7:13-15 (NASB)

"If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people.
And My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place."

We love our freedom and the country that provides for that freedom of expression to be lived out but our obligation as His redeemed is to remain faithful and true to the One who gave it to us.

Pressing on toward the goal!