What's in a Name

Once the decision to have a child has been made and acted upon the natural progression of things is to start discussing names. This decision is, of course, made much easier once you know the gender of your baby.

I will never forget the look on my husbands face when we found out our precious little one was a boy. His smile was filled with pride, joy, anticipation, relief... maybe even a hint of surprise. Don't get me wrong, we would have been just as happy with a little girl. A happy, healthy, baby, was what our hearts desired.

We have been discussing baby names for years, literally years, and for the longest time we thought we had them figured out. Being of Christian faith, we believe strongly in the power of our words, so the meaning of our child's name was more important than how much we did/did not like the name itself.

Of course the first name that we picked, that we loved, meant "fool".
Well, that ones out.
The second name we liked meant "dusty servant".
So, let's see here, we would be naming our son Dusty Servant Potter. NO.

This may be more difficult that we had originally thought....

The gravity of what were were doing set in. We weren't just picking what to yell at our child to get his attention. We weren't just assigning a name based off of what's popular today, or what might be popular tomorrow. We were deciding what would be declared over our child for the rest of his life.

PRESSURE

What if we pick a name that he hates? What if we pick a name that makes him a target of stolen lunch money, and overall ridicule by his peers? This would be our first major, life affecting, decision for our son. We took the task very seriously.

We did a lot of walking while I was pregnant. Almost every Saturday/Sunday we would grab Sydney (our sweet boxer girl) and head to the bike path.

Let me tell you, every couple should walk together. Leave your phones at home, hold hands, and just go. Talk about whatever pops into your head, point out the squirrels sitting on branches, the deer in the corner field. Take time to listen to the brook as it babbles it's love song to the pebbles beneath it's clear waters. Sounds romantic doesn't it? I kid you not, walking could save you money on counseling.

This particular Saturday, we decided to break the rules and take our phones with us, researching names as we went.

We were on the home stretch when we decided to look up names by their meaning. This epiphany would have saved us quite a bit of time, had it only occurred days before. This brought on an entirely new way of progressing. We knew what we didn't want our child's name to mean, but had we taken the time to know what we did want to call him? We started throwing out meanings: wise, brave, strong... "What about Barrett?" Ben asked me a few minutes later.

I walked in silence for a few paces. "Barrett.... I could call him my little Bear Bear" I said, turning to look at his reaction. "Our little Bear Bear" he said.

We put our phones away and walked back to the car, hand in hand.

Barrett means "bear like, to have bear qualities; brave as a bear; strong as a bear; wise as a bear".

Barrett Michael.

Our son has the same initials and middle name as his daddy. When we address him we are speaking over his life: Strong, wise, and brave as a bear; gift of God, who is like God.

Now, that's a name.