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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Our Baby's Name

 We have been pleasantly overwhelmed and amazed by the outpouring of love and encouragement from so many of our friends and family, and even complete strangers!  With so many people wanting to pray for this little guy and our family, we would to introduce you to him by name! God definitely had a hand in helping us chose his name and we would like to tell you the story behind it first.

We actually found out that we were pregnant the night before we left for North Carolina... our FIRST family vacation to the beach!  Once we got to the beach and settled in, we decided it was time to make the announcement to our kids! We had them each write their names in the sand and took a picture of them next to it. Once they were all done, we wrote BABY #8 in the sand and I sat next to it.  Dave called the kids over and with big eyes, they jumped for joy and were thrilled to be adding to our family!

When we got home, we had made an album of our vacation pictures and added that "Baby #8" picture in there. We shared the pictures with our parents and family members and that was how the baby was announced to them as well!




While we were on the beach for that week, we walked every morning around 10 a.m. Even though some mornings were overcast or rainy, the beauty of the ocean and the beach never ceased to amaze us!  The kids would ask to go "shell searching", so we grabbed our sand pails and headed out! We had a certain direction that we would walk because at that time of day, there were plenty of shells to choose from. On about the 3rd day, Dave mentioned to me that he thought the broken shells were neat.  He said, '"Isn't it amazing that these shells have been tossed and turned and smoothed by the waves? It makes each one unique and more beautiful, despite the fact that they are not whole."  Looking down at my bucket, I noticed that most of mine were not whole. There were a few, but my favorites were those that weren't "perfect".  This theme seemed to carry on with all of us. We would lay out our piles of shells at the beach house and talk about our favorite ones. We all saw the beauty in the unique, broken shells.

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In August, just days after we shared our story with our Pastor, he gave us an encouraging little book. Ironically, the title of the book was called "My Beautiful Broken Shell".  The book tells how there is profound beauty in brokenness when placed in the hands of the Lord.  Reading the book brought back that conversation that we had at the beach that day.  Since day one of receiving the news of our baby's condition, we still believed that our baby was a wonderful , beautiful blessing despite the medical world telling us he is physically "broken".  This baby is made exactly the way God wanted him, so to us, he is perfect.

 After finding out there was a possibility of T18, we spent days hugging and holding each other every spare second we got.(We're huggy people anyways, so this was really no different!) Dave and I constantly said the words "Whatever happens, it is God's plan!"  I bet some days, we said it 20 times a day.  A couple of verses kept coming to our minds. One of those verses was Jeremiah 29:11, a very familiar verse that I always thought was good, but now I looked at it in a whole new light. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." God knows what's best for us, even when we don't understand! 

After finding out for sure about our baby's condition, I couldn't help but have this gut-wrenching feeling that something was taken from us. We had been planning on bringing home a healthy baby.  The girls and I would look at cute little baby clothes when we were out shopping and plan what we would like to buy.  We planned on moving Tucker upstairs and maybe adding on a room addition since we would need a "baby room".  One day,  God took me to Jeremiah 1:5 - "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before your were born, I set you apart.".  It was kinda a DUH moment for me. We never had anything taken away from us!  We were given this baby from the very beginning.  Nothing had changed from the second this sweet babe was "formed in my womb".  THIS situation is what God completely intended. No accident... no whoopsies, he didn't just "happen" to get an extra chromosome.

 
That verse has been on our fridge since we found out our news. The kids have drawn sweet pictures around the verse and wrote our baby's name around it.  Dave has it on his phone. It is a perfect reminder that things are just the way that God intended them to be. Right away, we both agreed that his middle name should be "Jeremiah".


So it came time to start thinking of first names. (Boy names are so hard for us, that happens when you are on your 6th one!)  There were a few that we liked, but we just didn't feel like they fit this little guy. After a couple weeks of racking our brains, I threw a name out at Dave. He decided he liked it and definitely wanted it to be on the list.  That night, as I was searching the internet, I typed in the name.  The first link I clicked on took me to the "meaning" of the name. The meaning was "OCEAN". My heart just jumped for joy.  (Usually, we are not big on meanings when we come up with our kids' names. Ashton's name means "settlement from the ash-tree grove"...not exactly earth shaking! ha!)  I mentioned it to Dave and he felt the same way that I did. The ocean has had such a special connection with this pregnancy, it made it just feel right! Next, we talked it over with the kids. Our family does everything as a team, so we wanted them to have a part of naming him too. It was unanimous, they loved it and loved the meaning!  It was official, his first name would be "Kai" (pronounced Ky).

Kai Jeremiah... such a sweet, but strong name for our unique little boy!

1 comment:

  1. I absolutely love this! I'm so glad I read back to this. I have always had a very strong connection with the ocean. Any body of water really. For Sully's 2nd birthday I went to Florida by myself to just be. I feel closer to him by the water if that makes sense. You gave your beautiful baby #8 the perfect name. Kai Jeremiah will always be loved and remembered.

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