What's in a name?

"Aww! What a cute baby! What's her name?" 

These comments precede many conversations Steve and I have with strangers  these days. When we reply "Thank you! Her name is Ruth." 9 out of ten times people stop and say "Oh, I like that, you don't hear that very often. Why did you name her Ruth? Is it a family name?"

We wanted to share our answer with all of you! A good bit of thought went into why we named Ruth, Ruth and we love to tell the story.

First off I must say there is a lot of pressure in naming a child. They are stuck with it for the rest of their life! We wanted her to love it (the jury is still out on that one) and for it to have meaning. On top of that both Steve and I had to like it too. We didn't want either of us to feel just "ok" about it. We had to both love it.

From the moment we found out we were pregnant (ok not the moment, because we were on a youth trip and had no privacy, but shortly after) we started talking about names. Being seminary students we learned that names hold a lot of weight in the Bible. Your name often times dictated your path. For example the name Eve means "mother" and David means "beloved." Eve was the first mother and David was a man after God's own heart.

We also liked the idea of naming our child after someone in scripture. We wanted to be able to share scripture with them from the very beginning and what better way than to tell them about their name. This can be tricky as many of them are not people you would want to name your child after. Another example: Someone suggested "Jonah." While it is a lovely name we did not want our child to mimic the story of Jonah's life! A man unwilling to follow God's call and being bitter about it once he did! YIKES!

After much discussion we ended up with our girl name as "Ruth Elizabeth." Two women from scripture who loved the Lord and finished their lives strong. Ruth means "friend" and Elizabeth means "Consecrated to God." Like her name, Elizabeth, suggests, we have given her life over to the Lord and our hope is that Ruth's personality would reflect her name. We hope that she is a true friend to everyone she knows. For us the truest friend she can be is one who shares the love of Christ with everyone she knows. For her first Sunday at church the sermon was on friendship. Isn't God cool!

We had two other reasons that we loved the name Ruth. The first is that the story of Ruth is one of our favorite stories in the Bible. It is such a picture of the gospel! A women who represents all things against God was brought into his family and used to for Gods glory (She is even in the line of Jesus!) The second reason we loved this name is that it is my mother's middle name. We wanted to honor my mother with giving her a name sake. She is another woman who has lived for God and been a friend to all.


Ruth Elizabeth,

Mama and Daddy hope you love your name! We picked it out special just for you! You are already such a sweet friend to all the people you meet! Our prayer is that you will know God and live for him all the days of your life!

We love you,
Mama and Daddy