Day 17: Choosing a Baby Name
Thank you to everyone for the sweet encouragement and prayers after yesterday's post! It means so much that you would take time out of your day to pray for us. People often make comments about how they appreciate my honesty on this blog. But I have to say, I really have you all to thank for that! The reason I share so much on my little space here, is because I know that people who really care read it. You have shown me that time and time again with your prayers for us. Why would I not be honest here?
So again, thank youfriends.
Today I thought I would share a little more about how we came to decide on the name Hannah Leigh. And as always, it will lead back to this month's theme of "being content," I promise. ;)
The funny thing is we had a girl's name picked out when I was pregnant with Micah, before we knew he was a boy. But for some reason it was nowhere close to being on the radar this time.
It was a lot harder to come up with names this go around, because I wanted to have some sort of congruity with siblings. I know that's not a big deal for everyone, but it was just something I thought would be cool and sweet at the same time (hopefully my children will agree with that when they get older). So after thinking on it for awhile, we agreed on keeping the "ah" at the end of their names.
Which helped us narrow it down a lot.
And just when we were pretty settled and excited about a boy name, we went to the gender scan and found out we were having a girl! Haha, of course we were so excited about it, but also so clueless as to what the name would be. The only girl name that really stuck with us was, "Hannah."
I have loved Hannah in the Bible since I was a junior in high school. I remember reading her song to God after she had given birth to her son Samuel and being so touched by it. I even put my own music to the words and sang it at church. Then when I graduated, my youth pastor gave us all a biblical name that he believed matched our character and mine was, you guessed it, Hannah.
Josh really loves the meaning of names. So the fact that Hannah means "grace of God," was pretty perfect. It is because of God's grace that we live. We are thankful for His grace on our lives that allows us to be able to have and raise children.
The middle name "Leigh" was probably the easiest part. It is my middle name and has been in my family for years - both men and women have the middle name "Leigh" or "Lee," so I knew I wanted to pass it on.
Names can be hard. And if you haven't noticed, people are pretty sensitive about them too. The responsibility of naming a child is not something we take lightly. Josh and I don't always have the same "taste" in names either, so that's been fun. I could handle a unique name probably much better (ok, a lot) than he could. But the truth that we both agree on is that names should mean something.
Believe it or not, but I learned a very important lesson on contentment when picking out a baby name. My opinion is not the only one that matters. When I take time to consider others (in this case, my husband) I am not only showing I value them, but I am learning to be open to suggestions, and to have peace in the decisions I make. And in this case, the decision we made to name our baby girl, Hannah Leigh, is one I am very content with.
This post is part of a series I’m writing for the month of October entitled “31 Days of Being Content.” See all other posts in this series by clicking here. Or enter your email address in the sidebar on the right to subscribe to this blog and receive posts straight to your inbox!