who are you going to be?

We've opted once again to be surprised about the gender of the baby (much to my garage saling dismay [think of all the cute outfits at great prices that I have been missing!!]). While I enjoy the idea of being surprised, the waiting is torture!!!


Anyway...after a lot of searching, we have settled on baby names.


We kept our baby boy name from Sydney...


Elijah Townsend


Elijah means My God is the LORD - for those who are geeked out about such things, LORD is actually Yahweh, I AM WHO I AM. I like the idea of Yahweh, the self-exsistant, being our God. God is everything we need in life. "In Him we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28a


Townsend is from William Cameron Townsend, a great christian man who started the Wycliffe Bible Translators, an organization commited to translating the Bible into the language of people who do not have the Bible. I like the "heritage" of this name.





And our girl name is...


Kezia Lily


Kezia is one of three daughters born to the Old Testament man Job after God restores him and blesses the latter part of his life. (Job has been rather meaningful to me (Naomi) since our miscarriage last year.) Kezia, and her sisters, are mentioned as being beautiful in the land and that they recieved an inheritance along with their brothers (Job 42:12-16).

Throughout the last year, I was constantly reminded of God's sovereignty and love with verses like "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD." (Job 1:21b), "By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me..."(Psalms 42:8a). "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Psalms 42:11). I like Psalms 42:11, sometimes we need to just listen to and know the truth. We need to tell our emotions knock it off, my hope is in God, and because He is good, I will praise Him the Savior of my soul and the God of my life.


Lily is sort of a tribute to my dad and his mom. Early in the naming process of Sydney, Lily or Lillian came up as a possible middle name paired with another name that I have since forgotten. When I mentioned Lily as a possibility, my dad got this soft, emotinoal look on his face as he said, "Lily was my mom's name." (She died unexpectedly in November of 1992 from a massive heart-attack.) It was really touching.

I like Lily also because of Jesus' reference to them in the Gospel of Luke (12:27-28a) "Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?" The lily is a beatiful creation of God, as is our child.