The Name Of Our Fourth Baby

I haven't posted in over a year.

No better time than now I guess.

I wanted to post about the name of our fourth child.


We have experienced so many changes since coming up here to Crystal Lake. The Lord has slowly but surely been cutting away our flesh and teaching us to walk more fully with Him. We have very much poured our lives into our church and our community around us. God has slowly been cutting away our flesh and helping us to lay down lesser things. Little things for me like TV shows that I loved or a laziness and maybe a bit of a complaining spirit. Little things that weren't big yet, but He's just shown me that I don't need those. So much of it is in the heart and maybe not always visible to others, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

The Lord likes to rid those things from us.

I won't cover what God's done in Ben's life, he could tell you if you ask him :) but it's always good and it's usually difficult.

So each of our children's names have significant meaning for what the Lord has been doing in our lives. Ben and I like to say that they are our monuments for the Lord.

Levi's name means "to unite" I felt like as our oldest child he would be the uniter of many children. The Lord was calling us to lay down birth control at the time (which terrified me) and I didn't know how many kids we would have, so leaving that up to the Lord I was trusting Him that He would number them.

Aria's name means wind or air. She was conceived around the time there was a Holy Spirit revival at our church and we saw a tremendous move of the Spirit. Our prayer for her is that she would be Spirit-filled and on fire for the Lord. You can read about it here

You can read about Simeon's name here


We have felt like the Lord was calling us higher into His Kingdom, closer to Him, more responsibility in our lives... all of that.
So we were looking for names that meant strength or ascension or high calling or something like that. None of them seemed right. Until one night Ben and I were on a rare date and talking about this little boy we knew we were having and the name Paul came up. He was a leader of the church and it's also Ben's dad's middle name. The interesting thing is that Paul means "small" it doesn't necessarily fall into the categories we were looking for. But then, it suddenly made sense... when God calls you higher, He also calls you lower. He calls you to greater humility, greater servant hood.

A few days later I heard this scripture:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to become first among you, let him be your slave- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a random for many." Matthew 20:25-28


So with this fourth child, we are understanding that God's desire in our lives is not to be served, but to serve all the more.

We are naming his middle name Allen after my dad''s middle name which means "noble stone" and really, I'm super pumped about this addition because now his name Paul Allen means "small, noble stone" A friend commented, "And what can God do with a small, noble stone?" Ben and I responded in awe, "He can slay a giant."

I love it that the Lord chooses the small things, the insignificant things of this world to glorify Himself.

Lord, may we become less so that You can become more in our lives.

All glory and honor to God.

Naming Baby #3

I have been hesitant to write about this because it seems to permanent to put it out there. You know, that we are naming our baby _______. But the more I've thought about it, the more I feel like it's all just a process. At this point, we feel that this name is a very strong possibility and we can't come up with anything else.

Also, I feel like the beauty of blogging is that it shows the process. Blogs are not like books because they change and grow with the person. This is our "public record" if you will, of where we are on December 20th, 2013 and who knows, we may change, we hopefully will grow, but this is the snapshot of what is on our hearts and minds.

All of that buildup… Okay, are you ready? We are 99.9% sure we are naming this little boy

Simeon James

How did we come up with this? Honestly, Ben is the best namer in the world. Or maybe just from the two of us. As I have said before, I struggle with naming things. Maybe it's because names feel so concrete and I am more of an abstract thinker, maybe it's because I think something is so much more than a name or it's just because anything I come up with is stupid. Maybe that last one is the most correct.

I knew I wanted a name that had to do with prayer. Ben is in a cool season of prayer right now. On Monday mornings he fixes pancakes and has a few guys over to the house to pray. On Wednesday mornings he goes up to our church and prays with about 40 other men. Both of these are from 6-7 and he has been faithful to continue almost every week, even through his torn achilles and not being able to drive. I have such an admiration for his faithfulness in this. Also, I have seen a huge growth in his personal prayers. It's hard to explain really, but I just feel like he's better at praying and it comes more naturally. He has also valued prayer more and sought it more. What an amazing thing to see in your husband.

So, I wanted to be able to tell this baby, "This is what your name means, this is what was going on in our lives and what God was doing in our family and in your Daddy."

One morning Ben suggested the name Simeon. You can read about him here. He had been crying out for Israel in the temple, praying for his people for years and years. He was promised by God that he would see the savior and when he did, he prophesied over Jesus. I absolutely love this passage. I love the boldness of his prophecies and his prayer. This is what I want for my son. I want him to be crying out to the Lord on behalf of his people. I want him to be devoted fully to prayer. The name Simeon means "God hears" and I think that is perfect, because when we pray, we need to pray in faith that God hears our prayers. We cannot think that maybe He is listening, maybe He's not. He hears our prayers.

We have had a few hesitancies about this name though. I don't think that I want to blog about them right now, just because to me, they are irrelevant to what we are naming him. That's what stinks about naming, you can always find a way to ruin the name. Some kid on some playground somewhere is going to ruin it and you can't do anything about it. I was just reading in Titus the other day that to the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

Oh yes, and the middle name is more of a family name. It's on both sides of our families, so we thought, why not? Also, I really love the book of James and how it is a book that involves so much action and truth. If you really want to be convicted, read the book of James. It's beautiful. We want him to be a man of truth and action as well as a man of prayer.

Honestly, every other name that we have thought of just hasn't seemed to fit. So now, with just three weeks left of this pregnancy, I'm feeling like maybe we should settle on this one and stop debating.

We will see.

Pregnancy again. :) part 9

Okay, so I haven't explained what we are going to name our little girl and why.

I've been praying that the Lord would give me a name and I would just know it was her name. I'm really good at shooting down names and being a hater. Someone will tell me their favorite name or something that they really love and I'll be like, "Uhhh, nah." Awkward pause and then move on. I kind of hate it when people suggest names to me because I usually feel like a jerk as I reject their name. It's not that I don't want to hear their suggestions or that I think their stupid or something, I think it's just that I feel bad.

Okay, all that to say we have decided on:

Aria Dawn

How did we come up with this name? Ben did. He is amazing. I know. We had been talking about it one Sunday afternoon and I liked the name Lyric. I wanted something different and light and meaningful, I write lyrics and stuff, but I wasn't totally sold on it. Ben wasn't a fan of it. The next morning I came out into the living room, he had just come home from working out and he told me he had a name idea. So, Jody, I was thinking about the name Lyric and how it has to do with music, so I was thinking back to my Music Appreciation class back in college (uh oh, if you were not a music major you wouldn't understand, it's kind of like me telling Ben and IT major that I was thinking back to my Word processing class in college, very basic, eyes are rolling) and I was thinking about the Italian operas (another uh oh, I'm not a big fan of the big, gaudy Italian operas, it's just too much for me... yes, I majored in music, I reserve the right to respect operas, but not enjoy them.)  What is the song that the woman sings in an opera? An aria. In Italian it means "air" or "wind" ... hmmm, it also means melody or song that the female sings in an opera or oratorio.  The wind is significant to me because we had been studying in church about the Holy Spirit as the Wind. God did some significant things in our church during that time, she was also conceived during that period. The more I thought about this name the more I just knew it was her name. Good idea Ben, I'm sorry I didn't have faith in you. :)

We decided on the name Dawn because it's my mom's name and we just wanted to honor her in that way. (Ben jokes that this way she will be mom's favorite grandbaby:)). We were also thinking that if her name is Aria (wind) Dawn (morning) it would be like her name is "the wind of the morning" ... a new and fresh wind. I hope that's what she is, just a breath of fresh air. I love morning breezes as I'm starting out on my walk and the wind just rushes up the hill to brush my face.

So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. She's 22 weeks along and having a grand time jumping, kicking and basically dancing around in my womb. This morning as I was playing and singing in worship I could feel her just going crazy. Already a worshiper? Yes, please!