Chen Yue En

陈悦恩

It's what Eden is called every day at her preschool. It's how her friends and teachers know her. The boy at school she now says that she wants to marry when she grows up... it's what he exclaims when she walks in the door Monday thru Friday.

When our Chinese friends helped us pick out her Chinese name four years ago, I was very casual about it. I didn't put much thought into it, honestly, nor did I really care what Chinese name they came up with. In my world, she was Eden. She always was Eden. She always would be Eden. Egocentric, that was me.

And now, the vast majority of people that Eden sees every day refer to her as Yue En, instead of Eden. 

I'm a pretty terrible person about it too. I catch myself thinking, "ugh...that's not her name...why can't they just call her her real name?!"  Or when someone says something about her to me, and I find myself wondering who the heck they're talking about. Or like last week when I called up to her school to chat with her teacher and introduced myself as, "Eden's mom." but then had to correct myself when she wasn't clear of my meaning and had to say, "Yue En's mom."

I get this egotistical chip on my shoulder about people referring to MY daughter with a different name than the one I gave her when she was in my tummy over four years ago. More like a boulder really.

A gigantic, heavy, grey, ugly boulder. That's weighing down my shoulder so much so that it's beginning to smother my whole body.

Fortunately, God grants my four year old some wisdom on occasion to speak truth into my life. To help redeem me. To help knock the giant grey rock of my shoulder. To dropkick me into place.

It was simple really. We were outside playing and a neighbor came up to chat with us.

After the usual first few questions of... "Where are you from? Are all three kids yours? Do you watch them all by yourself? Is your baby wearing enough clothes?"... She turned to Eden and said, "What's your name?"

Eden replied in an upbeat tone, "Eden!" Then she sheepishly turned to me, grinned, and covered her mouth like she'd made a mistake and said, "hehe, I forgot." Then turned back to neighbor lady and said, "Wo jiao Yue En!" (call me Yue En!)

It was the first time I've heard her say the full sentence in Chinese. It was the first time I've heard her say her name so proudly. She was owning it.

My giant boulder came crashing to the ground in a million little narcissistic pieces. Outwardly, I was pleased that my daughter was so proud of her Chinese identity, that she was finding a place in this culture that is so foreign to me but that is home to her. 

Inwardly, I was cut to the core in realization of my self-absorbed thinking. 

It's a hard journey for me to overcome my small world view. It's difficult for me to get over the fact that my daughter's upbringing is going to look night and day different from mine. It's hard for me to accept that Eden will grow up dodging pee puddles on sidewalks rather than dodgeballs in elementary school.  I worry about her learning so many Chinese characters but never getting to lay on the trampoline at night and count the stars.

But slowly, much too slowly I'm sure, I'm asking the Lord to change me. To eagerly accept this world that Eden calls home. To try to see it through fresh eyes, her eyes, His eyes, and find joy in it rather than weird. 

Her eyes light up when she tells me about seeing a street seller strangle a chicken and getting to see the blood drip from the chicken's neck while he butchered it for their preschool's lunch. What I find disgusting and weird, she finds fascinating. This will be her normal. It will be vastly different from my normal.

And her normal will largely be as Chen Yue En.