Most mornings, I start with a resounding determination to “finally do this godly wife-mother-homemaker thing right.”

The schedule looks so perfect, and makes so much sense…on paper, that is. In reality, though, it rarely works out. Why?

Interruptions.


This morning, I woke up at a decent hour, got dressed right away, got breakfast started, and decided that, after breakfast, we would do our catechism, then spend the next hour or so tidying up from the weekend, doing laundry, and making order out of the chaos.

So, after breakfast, I sat the children next to me on the couch, said a prayer, and began to read:

This week, Dr. R.C. Sproul’s daily podcast, Renewing Your Mind, is featuring his son, Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr., discussing the ultimate purpose and goal of educating children. I have been listening in daily and, so far it is outstanding!

You can download the mp3′s for free here: http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/renewing-your-mind/listen/broadcast-archives.html

Click on the tab for the series “Training Up Children”. You do have to give some personal information in order to download, but I’ve been downloading from this site for over two months now, and I have never received anything “spammy” as a result.

I recently finished reading Dr. Sproul, Jr.’s book, When You Rise Up: A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling. As I read it, I kept thinking, “Why, exactly, am I blogging about homeschooling? This book says everything I’ve been wanting to say, only better!”


Listening to this series of podcasts has reminded me that I have been planning on writing a review of the book. Now that I’m admitting that in public, you all will have to hold me to it!

This is the second post in a series I’m writing on choosing names of significance for our seedlings. To read the first post, click here.

My firstborn was easy to name. By the time I was 8 weeks pregnant, we knew that, if our baby were a boy, Asher Joseph would be his name.

Had I been a boy, my name would have been Austin Joseph. August was my great-grandfather on my dads side of the family, and Joseph was my maternal great-grandfather. My parents, however, thought that “August” sounded a little too grandpa-ish for the late 70′s, and Austin was considered a more “modern” equivalent.

Having had only one sibling, a younger sister, my parent never had the chance to use the name, and so as a girl, I always imagined that my firstborn son would be Austin Joseph. But by the time my turn to name a real baby came along in 2004, I found that Austin was not only perpetually overused, but also riddled with the baggage of several less-than-desirable namesakes.

Besides, we had come to the conviction that we wanted to give our child an name with a strong spiritual antecedent, so I found a book of biblical baby names, and headed straight for the “A’s”.

Aaron? No.

Adam? No.

Amos? Um…no.

Asher? Yes. Definitely Yes.

Not only was it an attractive Bible name that is not commonly heard, it also had a deeply profound, personal meaning.

After going through a year of infertility, I definitely felt happy and blessed to be having a baby!

Joseph still made sense as a great middle name. It reminds us of not just one, but two great men of the Bible, and it also honors my great-grandfather.

I didn’t really think about it at the time, but Joseph also means “may He add”.

Asher Joseph is now six years old and has two loose teeth. I love the name now more than ever, but I have to confess that I am a bit disappointed that it seems to have caught on and become popular, having made the list of “cool Bible names” at nameberry.com, as well as being mentioned numerous times in the latest version of Rosencratz and Satran’s best-selling book, Beyond Ava and Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby.

Maybe I’m a trend-setter?

In Genesis 49, at the end of Jacob’s life, he pronounced blessings upon his twelve sons. At first, I wasn’t too impressed with the blessing given to Asher,

It’s hard to believe that I am half-way through this pregnancy already! I had my 20 week ultrasound last Friday.

I am amazed at the quality and resolution of ultrasound pictures these days! Hello baby!

As I share pictures with friends, I’m having a lot of them asking me if we found out the gender of the baby.

The answer is, “no”. We have never found out the gender of our babies through ultrasound. The only time I ever regret this decision is when I visit a garage sale that has, say, an entire rack full of adorable baby girl dresses in near-perfect condition for $1 each. (I resist the temptation to buy them anyway).

We much prefer the surprise–not just for us, but for other people, too. Somehow, I feel, the excitement gets lost when the whole world knows the baby’s gender and name four months before he or she is born.

But maybe that’s just me.

One thing we don’t wait until the last minute for is to choose names for the baby. Although we generally don’t share them with others until we’re announcing the birth, we do ponder the decision frequently and, usually, make a choice well before baby’s birth date.

I have been particularly fascinated with nomenclature ever since I was a young girl. Whenever my family and I would walk into a bookstore, I would head straight for the stacks of baby-naming books to see if I could find my name in any of them. I usually didn’t. When I did, I encountered a variety of  meanings. Some books declared that Tiana meant “fairy queen” in Russian. Others said it meant “beautiful” in Chinese. Still others gave it a Greek origin, and a meaning of “princess”.

While my name is gaining popularity (no thanks to a certain Disney character), today’s baby name books now tell me that my name is a completely made-up name of American origin, with no meaning whatsoever. Nice.

Try telling that to my parents, who named me after Tsar Nicholas II of Russia’s daughter, Grand Dutchess Tatiana Nikolaievna, (remember the legendary Anastasia? Her older sister.) They figured, probably correctly, that it was a little long for an American girl, and so “Tiana” I became.

I have recently learned that Sam Houston’s second wife was a Cherokee woman named Tiana Rogers. While she doesn’t seem to be as noble of a namesake as the Grand Dutchess, it is intriguing to me, since I have a Native American heritage that I know very little about.

Having spent almost my entire life pondering my name and its meaning, I have come to take the process of naming babies very seriously. An ordinary or trendy, “everybody’s doing it” sort of name won’t do, but neither will a completely newfangled, nouveau, totally-made-up name.

We want our children’s names to give them a sense of identity, a great meaning, and a strong, honorable namesake.

So, we’ve turned to the Bible.

Picking baby names sends me to parts of the Scriptures that I might otherwise neglect–lists of names in Numbers and Nehemiah. Obscure, passing references to godly people in the books of 1 and 2 Kings, or at the ends of the epistles. While I have yet to choose a name off of one of these lists, reading these passages reminds me that God’s redemptive history has included many more people than the “major players”. Multi-generational faithfulness necessarily involves many generations of people who are called according to His purpose.

Over the next week, I’d like to share the story of how we chose the names of our first three children, and maybe even some of the thought processes we are going through as we seek God’s wisdom in naming this fourth child.

How did you choose your children’s names?