Choosing A Name

After discovering that God was sending us a new little one...we began the long search for the perfect name. Our first two boys have Old Testament names of men who's lives reflected something of meaning to us:

• Josiah was a young leader who stood firm in his leadership and took action to turn his nation back to their God.
  
• Noah was a man of faith who obeyed the Lord in days of ridicule.
  
• Their middle names are family names.

Our two daughters names are inspired by flowers...(Matthew 6:28-30 reminds us that our God who clothes the flower of the field cares and provides even more for us as His children). Their middle names are also family names.

My husband began internet searches for flower names and came across the tansy flower. It is unique and cute as a name, but not hard to spell or odd to say. The flower is a small yellow button shape.
But the most striking thing about "Tansy" is that it means "eternal". This is meaningful to us because the Lord has truly impressed upon us that of all the things we have in this world, our children our eternal. Things, jobs, possessions, money, goals, accomplishments... are all of this world and will pass away. But our children are eternal gifts. A LIFE is forever. We have been so blessed to have a quiver full of five children-- eternal gifts-- from the Giver of LIFE.

Tansy's middle name is Grace. Grace means "unmerited favor". The Lord has blessed us by HIS grace~ enabling us to become His children through faith in our Savior's sacrificial death on the cross for our sins.

We did not know we were having a girl. But from the very beginning of the name search we were in love with the name "Tansy Grace". We are thankful that the Lord placed the name for this little girl on our hearts.

(We could never quite settle on a boy name... we had four boy names that we tossed back and forth but nothing really seemed right. I was truly afraid that if we had a boy, we would have to throw darts to decide which name to use!)