What's in a Name?

Still Standing Magazine asked: what’s in a name? How do you decide? What is important to you, when it comes to naming our children?

Here is my response.

Finding the perfect name was very important to me. I believe a person's name can say a lot about who they are and what they'll do in life. It's important to me to give a name that holds meaning and shows value. I wanted a name that would stand the test of time. Names are first impressions.

Bryan and I had a list going. We had mostly boy names (I just knew he was a boy), and a couple girl names too.

When we found out he was sick, I felt this huge immediacy to name him as soon as possible. I wanted to call him by name and have everyone we knew do the same.

Suddenly, every name on our list wasn't good enough. I threw them all out. It was going to have to be much better than any name we already had. 

It came to us quickly: Samuel.

The traditional meaning of Samuel is "God Heard". It's because God heard Hannah's cries and gave her a baby. But that's not really why we wanted it. (Although we wanted God to hear our prayers for him!!)

Hannah cried out to God for her son. She deeply loved and wanted her baby, but she also wasn't able to keep him. She had to give him back.

That's why we wanted his name to be Samuel.

For us, it means: deeply loved and wanted, absolutely cherished, but unable to keep.

We knew we'd have to give our beautiful treasure back, so we named him Samuel.

For his middle name, we wanted something to demonstrate his might. We knew we had a battle ahead of us. We wanted him prepared.

Evan means, "Little Warrior". How fitting for our little guy who fought so hard to stay! He was a fighter and we're so very proud of him.

Samuel Evan Fredrickson, our loved and wanted little warrior <3

Don't tell me I can't be born alive! I've gotta meet my mama and daddy <3