In Praise of a Name

"Everybody has a middle name," sings Chris Staples, "that they are not using." But laying across our queen bed last night, my netbook warming my wife's side, I searched for middle names. Monday, in a similarly dark room warmed by the glow of electronics, we saw the "boy parts" of our little one on the ultrasound. With the first name long decided, the middle name became our next parenting task.

On our Valentine's car ride to Mishawaka, we had tossed around the middle name question. What was in the question? Well, meaning. Why do anything "just because?" I'm not like Lady Gaga who is okay with saying her songs don't mean anything. Everything we do in life has meaning, I want to be aware of the meaning that my choices carry. I want to be intentional.

So, sitting in my grandparent's old Montana we began to decide what meaning is important to us. Was it tradition? Both my wife and I have the same middle name. Our first son, Gideon, has the same middle name. Do we pass it on?

Or do we just show how cool we are and give our son a middle name that is hip? Problem being that we're only part way hip. Listening to Brooke Waggoner while making this decision? Hip. Riding in a mini-van, going to shop at Old Navy... not so much. So a cool name like Aiden or Nevaeh isn't going to make our list.

What we finally landed on was that the meaning itself would be important to us. Why? The name that we decided on for the first name was Judah. Judah means "praise." What I want as a middle name is to know what kind of praise, who is being praised, how are they being praised. I want my son to be a man full of praise, and I want his name (middle name included) to be a part of that.

It's like that in the Bible. Jesus name means "God saves" and through Jesus, God saves. Moses means "deliver" or "draw out." Moses delivers God's people from Pharaoh and draws them out of Egypt. I want Judah to follow in these traditions, and to follow God.

So now, I'm sitting with my wife watching the Olympics, seeing people whose middle names I don't know win golds on one leg, crash spectacularly and get their skis torn right off, and cry out screams of praise at the finish line. We don't have a middle name yet for the little guy who is kicking my wife in the abdomen. But we know what we're looking for.

We're looking for meaning.