Yesterday, Madel and Anje were in my office checking records. I was at my desk, working, while Madel paged through the baby files. One of those ordinary mornings where several things are happening at once.

Then Madel said something that stopped me.

She was looking at a birth certificate and she said, almost to herself, that it was the weirdest birth certificate she had ever seen.

I looked over. It belonged to one of our toddlers. One of the little ones who has been here long enough that we have watched her go from a baby who arrived in a hospital bracelet to a fierce, loud, gloriously opinionated small person who has very clear feelings about what she likes and dislikes.

The surname was spelt wrong. And where the parents’ names should have been, there was nothing. Just a blank space where the two people who brought her into the world should have been recorded.

I started crying. I just looked at that blank space and something in me could not hold it. “It is so sad,” I said, to no one in particular, because it was the only thing true enough to say in that moment.

A birth certificate is supposed to be the first official record of a person’s existence in the world. It says: you were born, you have a name, you came from someone. It is a document, yes. But it is also a declaration. You belong. You are known. You are here.

Hers said almost none of that correctly.

I have called her our little warrior princess almost from the start.

She arrived here with a hospital bracelet still on her wrist. The plastic kind they put on newborns, with the tiny written letters that tell the nurses who this baby belongs to. Hers had compacted dirt on the inside of it. I do not know the full story behind that detail. I do not need to. Some things you just receive, and carry, and do not ask too many questions about, because the answer would not make it easier.

She was so small. And she was already fighting.

I think that is why I called her a warrior princess from the beginning. Something about her said: I am still here. I made it. Now what?

Last night, sitting with the weight of that birth certificate still somewhere in my chest, I prayed for her.

Not out loud. Just quietly, the way you pray when the words are too much and the feeling is too big and all you can do is hold the person up in your mind and trust that God knows what you mean.

I prayed that she will never feel unwanted. That she will never read that empty space on a document and believe it is the full story of who she is or whether she was loved. I prayed that we will do a good enough job, in the time she is with us, that she will know without a doubt that she is seen. That she matters. That there is a God who knew her name before anyone wrote it down, and who has never once spelt it wrong.

I prayed that when she is old enough to ask the hard questions, she will already be so rooted in the knowledge that she is loved that the questions will not undo her. That they will be the kind of questions a secure person asks, not the kind a wounded one does.

I read a verse last night that brought all the comfort I was searching for.

Isaiah 49:15-16. God is speaking to a people who feel forgotten, and He says:

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

Engraved. Not written in pencil. Not typed into a form that might get the spelling wrong. Engraved on the palms of His hands.

Her name is there. Correctly. Permanently. With both her parents accounted for, because her Father in heaven has never been absent from a single day of her life, not from before the hospital bracelet, not from the day she arrived here, not from yesterday when Madel put that piece of paper on the table and the weight of it made me cry.

He has always known exactly who she is.

That is the thing about this work. Some days it breaks you open a little. And in the breaking, you find that what spills out is prayer. And hope.

This little girl taught us that. She has been teaching us that since the day she arrived.

A prayer for today:

Father, you know her name. You have always known her name. Engrave in her heart, before she is old enough to read any document, the unshakeable knowledge that she is yours. Let the love she receives in this house be a small and imperfect echo of the love you have always had for her. And when the day comes that she asks hard questions about where she came from, let her already know, without any doubt, where she is going. Amen.