Joshua Part 1

There's a post I've been wanting to write for about a month. But my mood wasn't right for it so I've been waiting for the right time. I'm sitting here with a list of things to do, this not being one of them, yet I'm exhausted and can't get motivated to do anything but this at the moment... so here ya go.

It's a 2 part post and it starts like this... how did our baby get his name?

We certainly weren't planning to announce his name prior to birth, didn't even think we'd come up with a name so soon. But we did...

It was March 19th, the day I found out I was pregnant. Immediately after, God spoke a verse to me: Joshua 1:9- Be strong and courageous, do not be terrified or discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. It's a verse that often comes to me with all I've gone through. But at that moment, the emphasis was on "Joshua" to the extent that God spoke to me -your baby's name will be Joshua. (Knowing, yet not knowing, we were having a baby boy- because there was technically no physical proof of that at this point).

I had another odd realization after- Joshua "1:9" and the day I found out I was pregnant was the 19th. I have this weird thing with numbers so that stood out to me.

And yet after that, after we shared the news with immediate family, my mother-in-law texted me a verse- Joshua 1:9- not being aware of the meaning this verse had to me. It had to be a God thing.

I didn't share this all immediately with J because I self doubt a lot and didn't want to get his hopes up of having a son. I also didn't want to just "tell" him what our baby's name was going to be- it was to be a mutual decision.

So how did we come to that mutual decision? Well I was still open minded to every other name out there. We went through baby name books and wrote down ideas. We came up with plenty of names for a girl but couldn't come to any conclusion on a boy. That's when I told him about Joshua, that if we had a boy, God told me his name was to be Joshua. J was hesitant at first, but was still open to it.

So the day of the anatomy scan, again sitting in that office. In the midst of silence, J said to me, "we can name him Joshua." I felt this moment of relief or something I can't describe. It was like it was meant to be. I still asked, are you sure? Are you sure that's what you want? Are you sure you're ok with that? And we both agreed- we can't really argue with God! Our son was already given the name of Joshua.

I asked J if we could announce the name early and he agreed that would be ok. I didn't feel right announcing "It's a boy!" when there was much more to it than that. We aren't expecting just a boy, we are expecting our precious son, Joshua. One of the meanings of the name Joshua is "God is generous" ...and that he is. Joshua is our gift from God.

Part 2 of the story to come...