Behind His Name

While reading through my blog the other day, I realized I never did post the meaning behind Levi's name last summer.

Our favorite boy name had been Levi since shortly after Micah was born. We were torn on a middle name but had a few in mind, all family names. We leaned heavily toward Matthew which is Luke's middle name.

We never got serious about names while waiting to be matched with a birth mother. We figured once we were matched, we'd become more serious about it.

Well, our adoption didn't happen quite like that, and we weren't matched until after Levi had been born.

The night of July 19th, the day we learned about Levi and the day before we were officially chosen and headed to his birth state, we talked a lot about what we we should name this little man who we hoped and prayed and believed would be our son.

We were pretty confident his name would be Levi, but we also really liked Jonah... and Silas even came up a time or two. We were still torn between Matthew and another family name as his middle name. After chatting about it for quite some time, we just weren't ready to commit. This was happening so fast, and we decided we just needed to see and hold him first.

On July 21st, we met our attorney Emily and Levi's birth grandmother Jackie in the hospital lobby at 8:30. Before going up to the NICU to meet our little boy for the first time we had a few minutes to speak with Jackie. During our conversation, she told us since Ashley had learned the baby was a boy a few months prior, she'd been calling him Luke. And Luke was put on his original birth certificate.

She asked if we would keep his name. We told her if Luke's (my husband) name wasn't Luke, we'd probably have kept it, but because his name was Luke and we didn't want a junior, we would be changing it. She didn't seem at all shocked and was very understanding as Ashley's other two biological children's names had been changed (and she was the one who changed one of them).

A few minutes later I was holding him, and my emotions were so overwhelming and all over the place. We were both ridiculously emotional and exhausted that day. We were too emotional to name him, but during our time at the NICU with him that day, we tried a few names on him. We called him Levi. We called him Jonah. We could not decide. Then I cried over the fact that this precious three day old boy didn't have a name. I hated not having a name to call him.

The next day was a little less emotional, and we were a bit better rested. We were both desperate to chose a name and spent our time with this little guy calling him both Levi and Jonah. We were still torn between the two and Matthew and the other family name for a middle name.

Then there was Luke. That name... just kept creeping back into our minds. We liked the name Matthew, but the true reason for using it would be to honor Luke. She'd named him Luke months before she'd ever heard of us.

Luke would have to stay. We loved it. It was too meaningful and significant to his story to not be a part of his name. But it would be moved to the middle name spot.

That night we looked up the meanings for both Levi and Jonah. We learned that Levi meant 'attached, joined' and Jonah meant 'dove.' Both meanings were awesome. But the one for Levi was perfect. And we'd both loved the name much longer.

July 23rd, three years from the day we were shaving my head because my hair was coming out from the very chemo that would cause my infertility that would set us on the path to adoption and to this precious boy, we decided his name would be Levi Luke.

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