What's In the Name?

I feel like anytime I see a new business, blog, or social media content creator, I always wonder why they chose the "business" name that they did. In case anyone else has a mind similar to mine, I wanted to discuss where the site name, Dear Zion, came from.

When I first felt like God was calling me to start a blog in 2021, I was in the middle of reading Without Rival by Lisa Bevere, which is one I absolutely recommend. Out of that reading, "Without Parallel" was created. I sat on that name for a year or so, and it never felt right in my soul. It also felt like I was trying to remake something that I did not originate, and that made me uneasy, so I continued to sit on it.

A little backstory on me. In both 2017 and 2020, I had two healthy, smart, wonderful boys that changed my life, but I desperately wanted a daughter. I began praying for a daughter when my first son was about 1, and then I got blessed with my second son. Sometime in the year 2022, I decided I would continue to ask God for a daughter. I even went as far as choosing a baby girl name as a sign of "faith"(something we will get into in another post). I always want my children's names to mean something and I feel like God always provides me the name that each of my children are to be called. In looking at girl names, the name I felt like God was giving me, was Zion. It was after this that I changed the blog name to Daughter Zion, in hopes that one day my Daughter might reach to this blog for encouragement and understanding. When I found out our third child was not the girl I prayed for, but the boy that God wanted me to have, I was hurt. But, God is still good, and he is never wrong, so at the end of 2023, we had our third boy, named Zion. Zion means "highest point" and is also a synonym for Jerusalem in the bible. Now looking back, it is amusing that he had me name a child after the highest point, which then caused me to reach my lowest point in my walk with him. I had a very hard time understanding why my prayers were not answered in the way that I was so sure they would be. For the last 2 years, I had allowed myself to become bitter and angry with him, instead of taking a cold, hard look at the fact that I was not only living in regular sin, but also putting in minimal effort into our relationship in order to get what I wanted. The world will tell you that your feelings are valid, but that is a lie. Allowing myself to believe that every feeling I had was truth, instead of realizing that the devil will feed you lies in order to gain control over your emotions, took me to a very dark place spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically.

About 3 months ago, I returned to my first true love. And I say that I returned, because he never changed. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I have since repent of the anger and bitterness that I was harboring over the dream that I felt necessary to lay down at his feet. And this time, it is different. I have been saved for as long as I can remember, but I can never remember my relationship with God being on the level that it is today. The world is changing, but so are those close to him. I feel deeply within my soul that it is time for Christian women and men to rise. And we women, are the keepers of our home. Not the leaders, but the keepers. We set the tone in our home without even realizing it. It is time for the tone to be set! Let us set the tone to be one that is both bold and courageous but also loving and powerful. We are in the most serious spiritual fight over not just our lives, but the lives of our family, and now is not the time to back down. I pray that together, we lift each other up to continue the fight. Pray, fast, seek God in all that you do, for your family depends on it!

Dear Zion, the time is now!