Our Baby Bean

If picking a baby name isn’t one of the top five causes of marital stress, I’d be surprised.  Because our first three kids were adopted we’ve always had a chance to see our children before giving them a name and we’ve chosen to keep their birthnames as their middle names.  So we’ve been racking our brains to try and find a name we can both agree on for our new son who is coming to us the old fashioned way.  Since we first told Josh we were pregnant and the new baby was just the size of a bean, he has referred to his sibling as Baby Bean, so maybe we’ll just stick with that.

Because our kids have all been called by birthnames prior to their adoption into our family, I think they’ll have a unique understanding of the new identity we have when Christ brings us into his family.  Each of our kids knows their birthnames and they sometimes use them as nicknames for each other.  Since the adoption of our foster daughter in September it has been a real challenge to convince her big brothers that she is no longer called by the name she had when she first came to our home.  Now she is our Bethany.

It makes me think about how tough it can be to really accept our new identity in Christ.  So often I want to go back to my old habits, my old ways of thinking because I haven’t really believed that God wants to make me new and has freed me from the person I was.  Just like Bethany’s big brothers calling her by her old name, sometimes the people around me can convince me that I haven’t changed at all.  I want to be embracing the love God has for me and the ways He’s freed me to be a new creation.  And I’m looking forward to meeting Him face to face in heaven and letting him give me a new name.  And if anybody has any baby name suggestions, feel free to pass them along because I’m sure this child won’t much appreciate being called Baby Bean when he goes to try out for the high school football team.