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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Did I ever tell you?

So I'm loving my friend Rachel's posts titled, "Did I ever tell you about?" and I especially loved her most recent one on her kid's names! I love naming kids:) AND, I love hearing about how and why my friends name their babies what they do!

So, here are ours!
Elias Powell: Honestly, Elias wasn't Elias until just before he was born. For the bulk of my pregnancy he was "Joaquin Powell". Before I took a pregnancy test, I knew I was pregnant and knew I was pregnant with a little boy who we would name Joaquin. I have a video of myself, my sister, and my mom as I'm taking the pregnancy test and we're all calling him Joaquin.

When I was about seven months pregnant, someone talked Nick out of it - saying we were too white to name our baby Joaquin. Well, no comment on that, but I'm still holding out for my Joaquin.
Anyhow, we were at a Christmas party just before he was born and we had NO names. We asked everyone to suggest a name and some sweet older friends of ours said that if they'd ever had a boy, they would have name him Elias. We loved it. It means, "The Lord is my God".
His middle name is Powell, which is my mom's maiden name.

Gloriana Eloise: Oh, naming that sweet girl.
So, like Elias, when I was pregnant with Glor - I just knew she was a girl and I was positive her name would be Talitha Katherine (and call her Taley Kate). "talitha koum" is the tattoo I have and it's a reference to Mark chapter 5, where Jesus raises Jairus' daughter and says to her, "Little girl - get up!".

Well, as you may know (or can read about here), we had a lot of complications while pregnant with our sweet girl and while Talitha would have been a fitting name since the Lord spared her from her fatal diagnosis, during that whole process we began to refer to her as "our Glory baby" or "our Glory girl". For me, changing her name from Talitha to Glory was a lot about excepting whatever God has for her - and praying that He gets the glory in every circumstance. Of course I wanted him to heal her, but more than that - I want Him to be glorified.


Eloise comes from a sweet old women I was standing beside at the dry cleaners one day while we were expecting her. She had to have been in her nineties but she was sassy as anything, and I just wanted to take her to coffee right there. Even then, I had an idea of how sassy our girl would be and I knew she needed a fiery middle name!
And again, I'm still holding out for Taley Kate:).

Benjamin Haddon: For real, Benjamin was my hardest to name.
I just think boy names are hard.
I asked for internet advice, I read literally like sixteen baby name books. Nothing seemed to fit with who I thought he'd be.

Then, one day, Nick and I were at a conference listening to PJ Smythe talk about how the Lord loves us and how we respond and he was talking about his son Benjamin. He said sometimes he has to put both hands on his son's face and say, "Benjamin Smythe! I love you!" and we were hooked. Also, Benjamin means, "son of my right hand" and for some reason, that always described how I felt about him in utero. He isn't my favorite (since I don't believe in that) and he isn't even our firstborn - he is just our special Benjamin, that we love so much.


His middle name is Haddon, like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who has been one of our favorites of the faith. In his time, his life wasn't easy and he wasn't loved by all, but he was sold out for Jesus and preached the gospel like whoa.
So, that's my baby name story(s).
I don't think we have a clear answer from the Lord about how many more children we'll have and where they'll come from (my body or elsewhere) but there may just be a Joaquin and a Taley later on.

Let's hear your name stories! Past, present, and future!

6 comments:

Amy said...

I knew little tidbits of your baby naming adventures, but I never knew all of this... and I have been wondering where Benjamin came from :) Thank you. I love it!

Andrea said...

I suffered five miscarriages, before we had our son. 10 weeks after my last miscarriage, I thought I was having complications, went to the doctor, and in short, I saw a beating heart on the ultrasound machine for the first time! I was 8w3d pregnant and didn't even know it. Laughing and crying all in one. We named him Jadon (Hebrew: God has heard).
Sweet Macy Bleu doesn't have a great story. I had always liked John Travolta's daughter Ella Bleu's name, but didn't want to copy it. I suggested Macy Bleu to my husband and he said, "No way! Bleu??? I don't like that." Today, Bleubelle has Daddy wrapped around her finger, and you can hear Jadon singing, "Sweeeet Baby Bleu...ba ba ba" with me all over the house :)

P.S. I'm holding out for a London, Pheonix, Georgia, and maybe an Ella Gray (no one steal these) :)

suzannah | the smitten word said...

can i just share the coolest baby name story ever? a couple at my parents church were pregnant, and they had some sort of normal name picked out, and then late in the pregnancy (honestly, it might have been when they went in to do the c-section) they discovered that the babe was growing OUTSIDE OF HER UTERUS. everything had appeared normal in her sonograms and everything. needless to say, this is extraordinarily uncommon, and when he was born healthy and whole, he truly was a little miracle baby. so they named him ebenezer, as in raising a monument to what the Lord has done. they call him eben. amazing, huh?

Leigh said...

Love some baby names! Love YOUR baby names, each one fits each child so well!

Can't wait to find out if we have two little boys, two little girls, or one of each! And really can't wait to finalize their names!

Rachel said...

Yay! I'm so glad you did this. I loved each story. Yours were MUCH more interesting than mine. The part about you being too white to name a child Joaquin seriously made me laugh out loud. :) I might think about it later today and laugh again.

Rachel said...

Love hearing about the kids names, and love reading about your oh so similar life to my own!!!...tried to click contacts to find your email but couldn't get it. I was wondering what you charge to design a blog header for someone, I am thinking about going public with my blog again but with a new motif. my email is Rachelbbaxter@gmail.com
Thanks look forward to hearing from you.