There was a man named "Regret." His mother died giving him birth and the only word she said when he was born was "Regret." His father blamed the boy for causing his wife's death and said his mother regretted giving him birth.
When he was only a few days old, his father gave the boy to an aunt to raise-he was never loved and was mistreated by everyone; he was the boy who "killed his mother." When he was fifteen he ran away and worked at whatever jobs he could get, he was often homeless and hungry.
One day he was applying for a job as a dishwasher at a fast food restaurant. The manager was a pretty young woman named Daisy, and when she looked at his application, she asked him what his "real" name was.
He told her that his mother died giving him birth and the only word she spoke to him was "Regret." She regretted giving him birth; his father regretted he was born.
"I don't think that is true," Daisy said. "I think your mother knew she was dying and regretted she wouldn't be there to love you and care for you and raise you. She didn't name you 'Regret;' she was trying to tell you she regretted leaving you. She loved you."
Regret was stunned. He'd never thought that his mother could have regretted leaving him alone in the world. He'd spent his life thinking he was hated as soon as he took his first breath. Maybe his mother was apologizing for not being there for him.
In that moment his life changed. He wasn't cursed; he wasn't unwanted. His mother had loved him.
Daisy hired him. Regret loved his job at the restaurant, he loved his life, he loved his name and most of all he loved Daisy. Daisy was the first person in his life to show him kindness and he was a new man. Regret and Daisy got married and had two daughters and named them Hope and Joy. They now own the restaurant where they used to work.
Regret kept his name because it wasn't a curse anymore; it was a gift from a mother who loved him.
So many children are born unwanted, an accident, a mistake, but we are not an accident or a mistake to God.
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you," (Jeremiah 1:5) and "From the body of my mother, he named my name" (Isaiah 49.1). God knew us and loved us before we took our first breath.
We might not be important or valuable to those around us, but we are important and valuable to God.
I love flowers, all kinds of flowers. I've never seen a lotus flower, but I've seen pictures of them, and they are beautiful. The lotus grows in filthy, muddy, murky swamp water.
Every night, the lotus sinks below the surface of the water and disappears, it is completely covered by mud and filth, but when the sun comes up in the morning, the lotus springs to the surface of the water, and it is clean and completely spotless-there is no sign of the pollution it came from.
The lotus is clean and pure and beautiful. It represents purity and rebirth. The next night it will once again disappear beneath the surface of the water and be covered by mud and filth and the next morning, it will be reborn clean and pure again.
Recently, a friend told me I reminded him of a lotus blossom. He knew my mother had attempted to abort me twice before I was born. She refused to feed me after I was born and was prepared to throw me into the river when I was less than a week old.
A man took me out of her arms and left me with a young couple that saved my life. I grew up in abject poverty, in a tar-paper shack with no electricity and no running water. I was abused and mistreated and neglected. I escaped, but I was nineteen years old before I heard a single kind word from anyone.
"But you rose out of the filth and muck and abuse and you bloomed, like the lotus," he said.
Crying Wind is the author of Crying Wind and My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced, and Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins.
