What's in a name?

Well, birthing class numero cuatro is in the books.  We are 34 weeks along with our sweet daughter and are we ever thrilled!  

I was thinking the other day that I have never explained the meaning behind what we are naming her.  It is actually a funny story.  So since before we were engaged we had, you know in passing, talked about kids.  We decided that we wanted to use biblical names as the names of our children.  So for the longest time I would joke with Abby and tell her when we had a girl I was going to name her Gomer.  Needless to say that didn't fly, so I assured her I would find another obscure (or just strange) name.  Abby on the other hand had always loved the name Julia.  Though we weren't aware of any Julia's in the Bible.  However, one day Abby was reading the last chapter of the letter to the Romans where Paul is giving thanks go people and sending greetings to his friends.  One of those friends was a person named Julia.  Around the same time, I was looking up names on a website that lists the names of biblical women and again found the name Julia there.  We do not know much of anything about this woman except that she was a supporter of Paul's church starting missionary journeys and a meaningful part of the church in Rome.   We thought back on our life experience of Julie's/Julia's we knew and they were all sweet, wonderful women of faith.  Something that is doubly wonderful about the name Julia is that it was also Abby's great-grandmother's first name.  Though Abby never knew her, we are proud to carry on that legacy as well.

In very recent days we have finally decided on Julia's middle name.  The name Julia like we said before mentions a great woman of faith, we decided to continue that by using a middle name that also has double meaning.  Ruth will be Julia's middle name.  Ruth is a (more well known) great woman of faith in the Scriptures and also is my mother's middle name.  

We are praying that our daughter will grow up to love the Lord and leave a legacy of following Christ as these women before her have.  We are so so excited about what the Lord is doing in bringing us this daughter.  It is fun to say that we are already parents and have consider ourselves such for over 8 months.  

To Julia Ruth Fisher (who will probably never read this) we love you very much and can't wait to meet you for the first time.  Love you, Mommy and Daddy.