And His Name Is....

Well, after much thought and back and forth discussions, Joshua and I have settled on the first name of our baby boy! Ahhh! I feel like in announcing his name, it makes him all the more real! But before I let you in on what that name is, I'd like to add here that the game plan is to wait and see what birth name he is given and then incorporate at least part of it as his middle name. We think it's important for him to have a little bit of his heritage in his name just as we hope to share with him his culture and roots of where he was born as he gets older.

There's a lot of pressure in picking out the name of your kid! I mean, after all, they're going to have this name for the rest of their life! Figuring out the perfect combo of unique, but not weird, trendy, but not overly common, is a bit of a challenge! And as much as we'd all like to say that we don't care about other's opinions.... we all desperately want people to say "Awww, what a great name, I love it!" (This is when I struggle with the people pleaser in me for sure! So if you hate his name, please just don't tell me!) And throw in the mix the importance of wanting a name that has a great meaning... and sheesh, we're lucky we settled on a name at all!

So here it is... drum roll please..... Our little guys name will be Isa (pronounced "Eesa").

Isa Helms! Isa is a variant of Isaac (Hebrew) and Isaiah (Hebrew), and the meaning of Isa is "laughter; salvation of God; the Lord helps me".

Oh how I love this meaning!

I feel the need to share a little background as to why we settled on Isa as his name. Joshua and I had been throwing names back and forth to each other for quite some time, unable to agree on one- surprise, surprise! My sister knows a gal that is married to a man from Africa with the name Isa, so she had thrown that name out there to me in passing conversation. I liked it... it was an African name that I could actually pronounce AND that I could spell for that matter! I brought it up to Joshua and he was a bit wishy washy at first- but then when we looked up the meaning- we both agreed that the meaning was pretty darn cool, I mean how can you not like "laughter; salvation of God; the Lord helps me"!?. Without being a 100% settled on it, we weren't sharing with people that it was the name we were leaning towards. But I was falling more and more in love with the name as I would write it on every little scrap paper I had around the house, while on hold with the cable company or just sitting at the computer desk. (After all, every girl knows you need to like writing the name out, just like before you were married you'd happily write out your soon-to-be married last name just to look at it!). I thought it sounded good with his brother's name Jude too... like, "This is Jude's little brother, Isa". When we would ask Jude if he wanted his brother's name to be Isa, he'd say "Yeah, Jude and Isa... it's good!". Hearing Jude's sweet voice say Isa could have sold me on the name alone!

So... here's the really cool part that sealed the deal!
A gal from my women's bible study approached me a couple weeks ago one Tuesday morning after class. She said, "I'm really nervous to talk to you about something"... which made me really nervous that she was nervous- but I said "Don't be nervous, what is it?!" (Geesh, I just said nervous way too many times in one sentence!). She proceeded to tell me how a couple weeks ago she woke up in the middle of the night and felt like the Holy Spirit said, "His name is Isaac, this is MY story". A little confused she was like "What God?", but that was all she heard, "His name is Isaac, this is MY story". All she really knew for certain was that this wasn't a message intended for her but that she felt the burden on her heart to share it with ME! So here's a gal who has NO IDEA that the name Isa (variant of Isaac) is written on every stinking scrap piece of paper around my house, and that it is the ONE name that both Joshua and I were in agreement on because we LOVED the meaning- so when I started getting teary as she was telling me this, I quickly had to let her know how crazy this was! You see she was nervous to talk to me because she didn't want me to think she was crazy... I didn't think she was crazy AT ALL, I just once again thought God was crazy for all the ways He's worked in every detail for this story! Isn't that so like Him though? God is crazy! He's crazy about His children... so why I'm always taken back at His involvement in the tiny details of this journey?!  I shouldn't be- He's crazy about Isa, even more than we are (Which seems hard to fathom sometimes)!

So yep, that sealed the deal! I figured if God is waking up other people in the middle of the night letting them know what our kid's name is going to be, then we might as well go with it! (o; And thank goodness for this dear friend that was willing to go out on a limb and be obedient to share with me the burden that the Holy Spirit had clearly put on her heart... our son's name! I can't even tell you how this whole journey has truly made me realize the importance in being obedient to the Holy Spirit's nudges in life- from the get go of this adoption we have been blessed by other's who have followed through to do or say what they feel like God is leading them to do! May I be so bold to listen and be obedient to the nudge of God as well!