Names

During the last year that I could call myself a teenager I casually asked my best friend a question about the future.

“How many kids do you think you are going to have?”

Shocked, he looked at me and told me he had never thought about it before. I offered that I expected I would have a dozen. He laughed, of course. Who wouldn’t at least grin at the prospect of a girl planning on having a relatively large family? Confiding fully in my friend I went on to further boggle his mind by telling him that I had all their names picked out and written down on a list.

The conversation progressed and climaxed in a challenge. He would make a list similar to mine. We would come together and compare lists. It would be fun. A few weeks later he told me he was done. We set a time to get together with the lists for the revealing. What a riot that was! He had three names written down. As he read some of the names on my list he gave me the famous raised eye-brow. There was one amazing thing about the lists that surprised us both.

The first boys name that he and I had on our lists was completely identical! First and middle names written down without prior knowledge to the other person. It was a tad bit spooky.

Less than a year after the comparison of our lists my best friend, DaRonn, and I were engaged to be married. The subject of children had come up a few times before and after the engagement. He talked me down from 12 and I talked him up from 3. We met in-between with 5. Before we said our “I do”s the list of our children’s names was solidified. Even the order was concreted in our minds. Want to know the list?

• Raimy Olivia
• Timothy Aaron
• Gabrielle Moriah
• Kaitlynn Glory
• Tyler Cole

We also decided that our youngest girl would be adopted. So far we have been able to make checks on the list as the years have gone by. We are just waiting for our last child. The idea is that she will be older than Tyler and younger than Gabrielle. As I have said with our first four, I am completely open to changes to our plan and will love my children unconditionally. I know that our Sovereign God can do as He wills. That being said, I imagine that things are going to work out as they were set about on the list some 14 years ago.

Every time I tell this story I am met with admiring disbelief. Believe what you want. It is what it is. Above all, I am just overwhelmingly grateful for the children God has seen fit to give us. This post (and the five that will follow) are an act of posterity so that my children will know how and why we chose the names that we did for them.

Tagged as: adoption, DaRonn, family, Gabrielle, Kaitlynn, Raimy, Timothy, Tyler