Naming Rights

Naming your child is your right and privilege. It is an inherent accepted important part of parenting. In scripture with all of the parents and children we rarely see examples of day to day parenting. There are no examples of potty training or teaching little ones to tie their sandals or clean their room. There are no nursery decorating chapters or how to pick a doctor tid bits. In fact there are very few scriptures even dedicated to pregnancy. But with almost every single example of children being born there is a huge emphasis on naming that child. It is a big stinkin deal. Often, as with the children of Leah, those names come from a very intimate place within the mother's heart. Naming my children has been a treasure for me. The names matter.  They aren't selected because of popularity or ease of spelling, but their meaning and inheritance matter to us.

As a parent naming your child is your right and privilege. {Even when you place them for adoption.} Waiting  on a child that will be born from another woman's womb has so many complicated layers. Expectations have to change, and often be beat back with a pitch fork. You simply can not plan for the unknown, and yet naming your child matters. To reconcile these truths is a reality I haven't come to. 

We were given a name for her. But we hold it loosely. If we have an infant through open infant adoption she will be called this name from the moment we hold her. But her mother will also be able to name her, a name from her heart that she will treasure. We want to honor her if possible by incorporating her chosen name into our chosen name... If possible. Some families adopting older children change their name, and if that makes sense we might consider that as well. The difficult picture would be if we go down the foster adopt road. Then we would have to call the child their given name for who knows how long. At that point it might too difficult on everyone to change it. 

But we have her name, or at least her waiting name. Over a year ago our sweet Balin, who was then five told us that his baby sister would be named Charlotte Grace. 

From the first time he said it, we recognized the name as special. And then when playing with some third names ( yup.) we found a combination that means "The undeserved gift of a wished for daughter". There's no denying that calling our sweet girl Charlotte, even if it is just a temporary while we wait for her name, makes perfect sense! So no hating if ten years down the road I'm blogging about Nora or Bethe or Violet or Pearl. But for now, we call her Charlotte.  It seems a fitting time, as we prepare for another road trip for that interest meeting I wrote of a few days ago, to reveal our hash tag. Laugh yourself silly, but I need a way to mark my posts about her. I need a way to invite y'all in to go through this with me. I'll be labeling fundraiser posts and blog posts in Instagram so if you feel like sharing you can tag it too :). So here we go, continuing on our journey, wondering how many #milestocharlotte.