Once I looked myself up in one of those baby books of names and their meanings. Have you ever done that? I discovered that my name means (drum roll please)…

                                                ‘clad in black’.

            Yep, that’s right, not ‘princess’ or ‘graceful’, or even ‘nice’, just darkly clothed. (Please don’t call me Mourning Melanie).

            Well, this was a little bit distressing to me at first. I mean, who wants to be shrouded in black? Darth Vader, of the evil Dark Side, was clad in black from mask to boot. Witches are black and so are those big cauldrons they mix up their awful spells in. Wasn’t the Lone Ranger the one with the white hat and the bad guy the one with the black hat? Even the fashion industry shunned the color not too long ago, deciding that ‘brown is the new black’! (I stand alone.)

            If only my mom had given birth to me in the age of New Age names, she might have convinced my dad to call me Illuminae or Brite or Blanc – any name associated with the light, with everything white and pure, good and true!

            There was a time when I loved my name. Melanie – it’s certainly unique. Not once in my entire academic career did I encounter another student with the same name. I always liked the way my name has not one, not two, but THREE syllables. I liked the way it rolled off of my tongue, and off of the pen when I wrote it over and over again in fancy script on sheets of doodle paper.

            That was before I discovered the truth about that 7 letter proper noun with which countless people have identified me.

            It’s not that I don’t like the color black. In fact, it rather flatters my fair skin and hair, if I may say so myself (and not sound too vain). I’ve quite a bit of black furniture in the house, and it contrasts so amazingly with my lighter-colored walls. Black is boldly beautiful.

            What disturbs me is what the color so often represents – darkness – especially in The Bible. In the Psalms alone I’ve found quite a few negative references to the dark. For instance, there is a “pestilence that stalks in the darkness” (Psalm 91:6), we are told that “haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land” (Psalm 74:20), and darkness and “the deepest gloom” go hand in hand in Psalm 107 (verse 14). The prophets Joel and Zephaniah both describe God’s judgment as “a day of clouds and blackness” (2:2 and 1:15, respectively).

            Bearing a dark name is like having ashes on your forehead – always. And well, maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. After all, the Ash Wednesday ashes are there to remind me of who I am without Christ – dust, ashes. Sinful. Black. This is the point I need to start from again and again.

            Something happens when you bear your ashes, when you embrace anew the dark truth of your sinfulness and your need for forgiveness: God’s light dawns brighter inside of you.

            Thanks be to God our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ brings His light – pure and holy – into our darkness!  He brings His light into dark me and He brings His light into dark you too.  And this is the wonderful truth that you can bear – eternally – whatever your name may be.