Behind the Name

Thatcher Levi Jones was born into the world on September 13th and I must be honest, I am in love with this little guy. It feels like he has been part of our family much longer than 17 short days. The kids love him. Ellie is constantly wanting to see him, kiss him, hold him, touch him, hug him. I am glad it is this way and that they aren't asking me if we can take him back to the hospital. Many have asked us where we came up with Thatcher's name and so I thought I would try and explain for all who are curious. Thatcher was actually a name we tossed around a little bit when we were thinking of names for Riley but it never stuck. This time around it was on the list pretty early on again and it just stayed there. Whenever I would pray for him I kept feeling like his name started with a "T". I kept throwing out different "T" names but Griff would quickly shoot them down. Many names were talked about, a long list was made (of non "T" names and many names were crossed off the list as well, leaving only Thatcher. The middle name actually didn't come about until two weeks before he was born. For the last couple months of the pregnancy I had been having contractions but when we were at church and I was singing during worship I would have a lot of contractions and he would be moving like crazy in that crammed little space. One Friday night we were at our church for a conference. I was only 35 weeks pregnant at that point, so not fullterm yet. During the extended worship that night I was having contractions every 3 minutes and thought, "This might be the night!" Thankfully, I went home, layed down and the contractions subsided. But, after several weeks of on and off contractions during worhsip we just felt like the Lord was trying to tell us something. This little boy, from the womb, was going to be a worshipper. So, I began looking for names that meant worship, worshipper, etc. Nothing really stuck out to us until one morning I was reading in the Bible and came across Jeremiah 33:22 - "I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashores." There it was! David and the Levites were followers of God. He would blessed them and make their descendants measureless. Wow! Riley's middle name is David and there in the same verse it talked about the Levites as well. They were the priest in the Old Testament that went before the Lord and worshipped, made sacrifices for the people, prayed, etc. It seemed fitting that Thatcher's middle name be Levi and Griff whole-heartedly agreed. So, we have added Thatcher (aka Thatch, Thatchy, T-bone, T-dawg) Levi Jones to our family and we are enjoying getting to know him, learn about him and watch him grow.