Confession: I over pack. I have been known to pack an entire bag of shoes for a 4 day weekend. (This is not about my shoes, I promise. Even though I would like for it to be about shoes. Everything should be about shoes. Wait, where were we?) I really like to have choices. Not only do I like choices, but I have been known to be indecisive; maybe once, or, you know, 273 times. I’m like that a lot, you should see me in a Baskin Robbins. Or maybe you shouldn’t – you might lose all respect for me in that 53 minutes.

So when it came to naming our baby you might think there would be a disaster issues. We decided a long time ago that we really like surprises so we weren’t going to find out the baby’s gender before it was born. Because we’re FUN! And we like to torture people! And we really like yellow! And green! And orange! (What is with me and the !!! today? No idea.) Thankfully Leo and I have similar ideas on names in general. We like biblical names and family names and gender specific names. This eliminated a host of discussion from the beginning. However, it did not stop Leo, my warrior husband, from presenting names for approval along the lines of MAXIMUS (no), LEONIDAS (no), SPARTACUS (no) and so on and so forth with the battle ready boy names.

The girl name was easy. We’re still “saving” it so I won’t reveal it (see how fun and surprising we are? On the edge of your seat, I know). But family tradition easily provided us with a name we both adore and hope to one day bestow on our little princess. So the boy name remained. But early in the pregnancy a name came to me that I wasn’t sure about, so I asked Leo. “What do you think about Joel James?” He replied that he liked it. So we just sat on it a few weeks to see if anything else came up. Much to our surprise instead of other options presenting themselves Joel James just cemented itself in our minds and we never discussed another name. We loved it, and didn’t even like anything else that crossed our minds.

It fulfilled all the criteria – my grandfather’s name was Joe, he named my Dad Thomas Joel. There are all sorts of Joes scattered throughout our extended family in his honor, and my middle name Joy is a nod in his direction. Rob’s father’s name is James. The name was Old Testament and New, easy to spell and definitively masculine. It rolled off the tongue easily with our last name and had a built in nick name Leo was sure he’d use. (I planned on arguing with him about that later - the child has a name, he doesn’t need to answer to his initials.) And then Joel was born and the name fit him. He was Joel.

Even though he only got to wear his name for a few days here on earth, I’m so glad that little boy got a name I adore so much. We still can’t think of any other boy’s names we really like. We have decided if we are blessed with another pregnancy and another boy we will just cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m slightly concerned we will have a nameless boy, but I am hopeful that God will send us a name if we need it – just like he did with my little Joel James.