The story behind naming our son, Joel Edmond.

When it comes down to it naming a child is not nearly as simple or fun as I thought it was when I was younger. If you ask anyone who knew me in middle school (and high school and college) they would tell you that I would spend hours thinking about, talking about and writing out lists of my favorite baby names. I LOVED baby names, that was until I had to actually choose one. The reality hit hard and fast that I would be solely (with Phil's help) responsible for choosing a name for my child.

A name is an incredible thing. Naming a child is a privilege but also a huge responsibility. While I felt honored and excited to bestow a name to this little baby growing inside me the weight of it all scared me. I wanted our child's name to be perfect and have meaning. I know now that whatever name you choose for your child automatically is perfect upon you making that decision because from then on you cannot see them as any other name. However you don’t come to realize this until after you have already named someone.

For some reason choosing a girl’s name was easy for us. We had the first and middle name picked out right from the beginning but boys names came as a challenge. We narrowed our long list down to three names and decided that we would wait until he was born to choose one. For the first 12 hours of Joel's life he was baby boy Travis because we couldn't bring ourselves to make the decision on no sleep for 36 hours. Phil and I tucked Joel into his cradle in the hospital and drifted off to sleep with the hopes of choosing a name in the morning for our little one.

The first thing I said to Phil upon waking up Saturday morning was, “Did you pick a name yet?”. His response, “I like Joel”. It all seems so simple looking back on it, sleep on it and in the morning Joel just became his name. Don’t get me wrong I love the name, and now can’t see him as anything else but our little Joel.

Joel is Hebrew and means Jehovah is God or The Lord is God. We came to like the name Joel because it rhymes with one of our favorite boys names, Cole. For as long as Phil and I have known each other we both liked the name Cole, but with a Cole already at church we decided that it would be too confusing to have another Cole. It was also important to us to have biblical name for either the first or middle name. We will strive to raise our son to love and serve our Lord. We hope and pray that he will grow up sharing with others about our Lord, just as the prophet Joel did.

Joel’s middle name is Edmond a combination of two men that we love and adore, my maternal grandfather, Edward, and Phil’s paternal grandfather, Rosemond. Combining the two names came to me on a whim one day and it stuck!

Thanks for reading!