Our Baby Names: Hadassah Ruth

Alright, Haddie girl, it's your turn, babe!

A year or two before Darrell and I started dating, I read through a book series called The Mark of the Lion series.  It was a Christian historical fiction series written by Francine Rivers, just in case you're interested in reading it! ;)  In the first two books of the series, the main female character's name was Hadassah.  She started out as an ordinary, fearful girl who lost her family to the violent Romans, and she became an extraordinary woman of faith, determination, and trust in the Lord in the midst of some unbelievable trials.  I was totally inspired and amazed at this woman's journey of faith ... yes, even though she is a fictional character.  It was just that good of a story!  And from that point on, I wanted to name my first daughter Hadassah.  I pray that Haddie will grow to be a woman of this kind of undying faith in her Savior.

Darrell and I agreed that we'd really like to pick strong, Biblical names for our kids, and thankfully, Hadassah is found in one sentence of the Bible!  Hadassah is Esther's Hebrew name and can be found in Esther 2:7.  So, boom!  We have our strong, Biblical name for our first born girlie!  In addition to the Francine Rivers' Hadassah, we really admire Esther's strength and courage to follow God and risk her life for her people.  Also, we chose Haddie's middle name, Ruth, from, yep, you guessed it, the book of Ruth in the Bible.  Ruth's story of courage, loyalty, and humility is inspiring and such an amazing example to follow.  Hence, our strong, Biblical middle name for our Hadassah.  I worked through a Bible study of both the book of Esther and the book of Ruth while I was pregnant with Haddie, and I remember being even more convinced that we picked the perfect name for our girlie!

God is so awesome!  I'm so thankful for my Haddie girl!

Our Baby Names: Bethel Grace

My husband, Darrell, and I found out a few weeks back that our second baby is another girl!!!!  We are absolutely excited and can't wait to meet her!  And we are totally in love with the name we've picked out for her!

Bethel Grace.

I was lying on my bed upstairs thinking about Bethel's name recently ... and then I started thinking about Haddie's name and thought "a blog post is in order!"  Darrell and I wanted incredibly meaningful names for our kids even before we were married.  Meaningful and Biblical.

This post is a bit backwards, seeing as Bethel is our soon-to-be second born child, but her name inspired the blog post, so I'll write about her name first.  I'll get to your's soon, Haddie girl! :) ..... I think it's been at least two years now since our Pastor taught through the book of Genesis, but his sermons about Bethel really stuck with us.  You can find the story surrounding our Bethel's name in Genesis 28:10-22.  It's all about Jacob's dream of a ladder reaching to heaven.  When he awoke from his dream, he exclaimed, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it."  So he named the place Bethel.  Over and over again in Pastor's sermons, he referred to Bethel as "God of the house, and He's home."  Wow, we loved that!  And that's exactly what we want for Bethel.  We want her to be a house of God and for God to really and truly reign in her life every single day.  And what a beautiful name for a girl!  We also chose Grace for her middle name because God's grace is God's greatest lesson in my life ... at least so far.  I have struggled to grasp and accept God's grace for myself (recovering self-condemner and all), so Grace is perfect and beautiful for our Bethel girl.

So there you have it ... Bethel Grace Thompson.  We can't wait to meet her ... 14-ish weeks and counting! :D