his name

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I had forgotten all about telling you how we chose Griffin's name. It seems like I do that a lot lately...the forgetting part. I think I have already told you, but choosing our boys names has been really hard. We have a huge list of girls names that we like, but our list of boys names has always been pretty short. But the Lord keeps blessing us with little boys, so little boy names are what we must choose! Maybe someday we will get to choose from the girls list again. :)

The meaning of the name we choose for our kids is really important to us. You can read about Levi's name here. I don't think I have ever written about how we chose Cora's name...maybe someday. With Griffin's name we really struggled with the whole meaning of the name thing. Every name that we liked, (which wasn't very many names to begin with) we didn't so much like the meaning of the name. And Griffin's name was the worst when it came to meaning!

Do you want to hear some of the meanings of the name Griffin?
*hooked nose
*fierce creature with the foreparts of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion
*reddish
*mythological beast
*strong lord

Nice, right!? Such deep, significant meanings.

We kept coming back to Griffin as our favorite boy name, but I just couldn't commit 100% because of the meaning. Joel assured me that no one but us would know all off those meanings when they heard the name Griffin. I tried to trust him. Guess what? As soon as my brother came to the hospital to meet Griffin he asked if I knew that Griffin was a half eagle, half lion. Thanks for boosting my confidence in the name I just chose for my son!

Anyway, we obviously chose the name Griffin (creepy crazy meanings and all), but decided to go off of the "strong" lord meaning. We would create our own meaning for Griffin and ignore all the other ones. We chose this verse from Jeremiah for Griffin:

This is what the Lord says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about his: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

It is our prayer that Griffin would grow up to be a man of strength because he understands and knows our Heavenly Father. We naturally want our boys to be strong and smart, but we are praying that Griffin would have the kind of strength that only comes from Him...the kind of strength that points others to Him.

Griffin's middle name is James. We chose this name after Joel's brother, James. James is the best brother and brother-in-law. We have seen him finish high school, go off to college, grow into a godly young man and be willing to do the uncomfortable and move to China to follow Jesus. James has a passion for people and for others to know Jesus. As we pray for Griffin to understand and know God, we pray that his life will also overflow with a passion for the things that concern our Heavenly Father...just like his Uncle James.

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One more thing...

A month or so before Griffin was born we had our name list narrowed down to two or three names. We would tell them to Levi and say, "Should we name your brother ____?" No matter what name we said he would always say "noooooo" and laugh. He was just starting to talk and so we asked him what we should name his baby brother. All of the sudden he started saying Griffin...and he said it in such a cute way--"gif-in". He just might have helped us decide on baby brothers name too! :)