Lydia Grace

 

The time has finally come when I have 20-ish minutes to tell you the name of our baby girl. We have been decided on it for quite some time, but the decision definitely wasn't an easy one and looking back we started to make it very early on in my pregnancy. 

Before I got pregnant I was absolutely set on the fact that my first daughter would be named Anna Elizabeth. David had agreed that he liked the name and he didn't have a problem with naming our first daughter that when the time came. However, when we discussed names for our actual first child Anna just didn't seem right to me if it were a girl. All of the sudden I wanted the name we picked to be specifically for this baby , not one that I had just always liked. Thus the search began.

I really love my name, but sometimes I must admit that I don't love that there are so many Ashley's. We decided that we wanted our child to have a more unique name, but at the same time David and I wanted that the boy and girl names we picked be somewhat "classic" names. We looked first toward the Bible because we also wanted any name we gave to this big blessing to have meaning. From the beginning Lydia stuck out to me as one of the few female Biblical names that isn't too common and David and I both thought it was beautiful from the beginning (it actually means beauty in Greek!). Then there was the role that Lydia played in the Bible, which is pretty awesome. Although she only appears once in the Bible, Lydia was very important to the ministry of Paul and the establishment of the early Christian church. Here are the verses in Acts 16 where her story is told:

Lydia’s Conversion in Philippi

11 From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. 12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

When the historical context is unpacked it is seen that Lydia was a resident in Philippi, in Greece, when the apostle Paul traveled there in the very beginning of his ministry. She was a successful business woman and sold purple cloth (yay purple!) which was very hard and involved to make back then. Lydia is the first recorded Christian in Europe to be converted by Paul, and her home became the place where the subsequent first church in Europe gathered to worship. Pretty cool. We hope and pray that our little girl will play an important role in God's kingdom and His church here on Earth just like the Lydia in the bible.

Now, for her middle name. Remember when David and I weren't going to find out the gender of our baby? Well our decision on our girl's middle name came along with the decision to find out the gender, in July as we were driving to South Carolina for vacation. David and I were listening to my iPod taking the opportunity of the long car ride to really talk about the fact that we were having a baby. In the process we stumbled upon this sweet song (the link takes you to a youtube video... just ignore the video and listen to the song :) ). Well we both teared up and from then on we knew our little one, if it were a girl, would have Grace as a part of her name. We also realized in that moment how much both of us had the feeling that this baby was a girl, even though we "expected" it to be a boy since it was a Harrison. So with that we decided that we should go ahead and find out the gender.

For a few months after we found out it was a girl we bounced back and forth a bit between options: Lydia Grace? Grade Elizabeth? Something entirely different? But it didn't take much thought for us to decide for sure on Lydia Grace, and we are so, so happy with our decision!