Naming Isaac

Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them." Psalm 126:2

As most of you know, my husband and I chose to keep our son's name a secret during our pregnancy. Mostly I wanted to wait to reveal his name once he was born because of our experience sharing our daughter's name. With her I learned that everyone feels welcome to give his/her opinion and inclined to comment on the name choice even if they don't like it. Unfortunately when we told people we were naming our daughter Hailey, we had several of them tell us in their own words that they didn't like her name, which offended and hurt me because I took it very personally. Therefore, this time I wanted to wait to reveal our baby boy's name until after he was born to avoid this since most negative comments and opinions go unmentioned for some odd reason once the baby has arrived.

Now that our son's name, Isaac Ryan, has been officially released, I want to share how this came to be his name.

I knew from the very beginning, or maybe even before the beginning, that I wanted his name to be a Biblical and meaningful name. Initially I liked the name Luke - my husband preferred Lucas, but I also began to think creatively about our family's first initials: H (our daughter), J (my husband), and K (myself) - realizing if we had a son's name beginning with the letter "I" then we would have H, I, J, K - get it? We'd all be right next to each other in the alphabet. From there I needed to come up with some Biblical "I" names. Initially Isaiah came up, which I liked but didn't seem fitting for our baby boy, and of course Isaac came up, but I too felt unsure about it since it wasn't a name that would have come up had I not wanted to make it fit my criteria.

Around this time we were part of a Bible study that was studying the story of Abraham and Isaac - one that I was vaguely familiar with but had never read or studied before. As we read through Genesis 22 and became familiar with the earlier parts of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac's story in chapters 17-18, I became intrigued by the meaning of the name Isaac and a deep connection to their story.

First, considering Isaac was one of the names we'd been thinking about I was happy to learn that the Hebrew meaning of it is "laughter"  or "he will laugh," which in chapter 21 of Genesis can be associated with a laughter resulting from joy. I thought that is a lovely meaning for a name.

But more importantly I related to both Sarah and Abraham to some extent. Here they were being told by the Lord that they would have a son when everything else (primarily being infertile due to old age) was saying it was impossible, and in fact Sarah first laughs in disbelief almost as though she thinks sarcastically to herself, "Yeah right God, that's not possible." In my case, I was given enough reason to believe we might not be able to have a healthy baby. I can't remember what our initial odds were to have a baby with Trisomy 18 - something like 1 in 3,000 or 6,000 - something very small, but once we did have one child with a Trisomy the chances of our next child having a Trisomy increased to 1 in 99 which to me were frightening odds. While my situation may not have seemed all that impossible compared to Abraham and Sarah's, I nonetheless felt at times that it would be impossible for me to have a healthy baby.

Of course God did fulfill his promise to Abraham, and Sarah gave birth to Isaac.  Again the Bible records Sarah laughing, but this time her laughter stems from joy at the birth of her son and God keeping his word to do something she thought would never happen.  While God did not promise me a healthy baby, I did feel him telling my heart we would have another child, and I would just need to trust him on the  details. God even allowed me to envision this child, and I could imagine a healthy little boy running around our house (which is also why I guessed our baby was a boy once we did get pregnant). For some reason I wasn't able to envision Hailey in the same way so it gave me hope that our next pregnancy and baby would be different and healthy. And even if that was just me and not a God thing, reading about Sarah and Isaac gave me hope. I longed to give birth to a healthy son  and laugh with joy over God's miracle like Sarah.

But back to Genesis 22 where this all started for me. God calls upon Abraham to trust him and asks him to make a sacrifice.  In case you don't know the story, God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham obeyed, but thankfully before he could kill Isaac, God intervened, saving Isaac. Abraham demonstrated his trust and a faithful obedience to the Lord; he showed God that he would not withhold anything from him, not even his own child, that he was willing to give God everything. After reading this, which again happened while I was a few months pregnant with my own son and struggling because of what happened with Hailey, I realized I was having a hard time trusting God and was withholding my trust when it came to my son. I wanted to be able to have a faith like Abraham's, but more importantly, I saw this pregnancy as my opportunity to show God I trusted hum whether he called me to 'sacrifice' my son to a lethal chromosomal disorder again or whether he would 'save' my son from it. Of curse, I hoped God would spare my son like he spared Isaac in the Bible.

After learning about the Biblical Isaac's life and the Hebrew meaning of his name, it became pretty clear that Isaac would be quite fitting for our baby boy's name. Of course the real test came from practicing the name on our baby boy, and when we did it felt completely right, almost as though God had chosen this name for our son. Isaac was really never one of my favorite baby boy names, but God made it clear that this was to be his name, and I have come to love it.

Out of all the history behind Isaac's name, I do still love it's meaning because our Isaac has certainly lived up to it; he has made me laugh with joy for the miracle that he is. And I pray that our Isaac will have a long life and continue our family tree (something I had once feared may never happen), just as was true with Isaac in the Bible.

"I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed^,because you have obeyed me.” Gen. 22:17

(Oh and I can't forget to mention that our Isaac shares his middle name with his daddy's middle name, like Hailey had my middle name for hers.)