Before there was Michael, there was Caleb.
Caleb was the name set aside for my first son since the beginning. Motherhood is a delightful concoction of intuition and ignorance. And before I even knew Michael I knew I would have a Caleb.
Coincidentally, Michael already had a Caleb or two in his family, so having another one was not too far-fetched. Naming a child is one of the easiest tasks but definitely not one without effort, for me. Two things that will make you take naming your child seriously:
1. Reading. Come across enough aptronyms and charactonyms and you’ll realize the suggestive nature of names. Once you read enough books, poems, and articles out loud, you really get a knack for indentifying “clunky” or “singsong” sentences. Names no longer have to look nice they have to sound aesthetically pleasing.
2. Teaching. You wouldn’t believe the “good-intentioned” names I’ve come across. Children are branded with their name for life, and although an unusual name can be a great way of kindling a conversation it shouldn’t be the centerpiece of everyday exchange… for the rest of their life… and even then some genealogist is going to come across their tombstone inscription…
With that said. You can understand why choosing a name can be an effort for me, but on the other hand, I also consult regarding the name as well.
Something that you never read in any engage-bound or newlywed book, is that you and your partner may have different naming styles. Although Michael and I agreed on Caleb Elias, our girls’ names have always been more difficult. While I was talking about a Caleb, Michael was always talking about an Emma. Emma, as you may know, is a very popular/trendy name, inside and outside the Church. Just like my taste in books and clothing, my naming style is not ‘trendy.’
I lamented over the name Emma because I didn’t want my daughter to have a ‘weak’ or ‘delicate’ name. Finally, I accepted the name on the condition that I would elect the middle name, thus opening a whole’other can of worms.
Emma is a singsong name. It is short. These characteristics coupled with those of the surname Thomson present some problems concerning the middle name. Basically, the middle name could not begin with a vowel or end with an ‘A’ and had to be a short name. Vowels would make the names sound like a couplet. A long name would make the written name look heavy-ended.
(Seriously. I’m a free-eeek.)
After my name resource books were exhausted the name came simply:
Lane.
I fell in love with it. Emma Lane.
Together the names meant “universal road.”
Together the names meant “universal road.”
Early on in this pregnancy, before the ultrasound that would live in infamy, I was informed I had low progesterone, a circumstance that could lead to a miscarriage. Saddened by this prospect, I turned to the scriptures. I had been studying diligently in the New Testament (diligently, here meaning that I had been able to pick up the scriptures once a day for three weeks, to read as much as a chapter or less as a verse), and continued my reading where I had left off that morning. Luke 24.
Reading that chapter was one of those instances that I knew my Heavenly Father was aware of me, his daughter. I cannot say I have progressed in my scripture study. Since that time, I have only read Luke 24. And not the entire chapter even, just the verses pertaining to Emmaus road.
Yet I have learned a great deal about grief, anxiety and depression, and what God has provided for me to endure and to heal.
When Emma Lou Thayne was asked to compose a song for a Young Women’s Laurel Conference, she was knee-deep in distress. Her daughter was ill, and Emma was busy serving on the YW MIA General Board, and was also facing a spinal fusion that would interrupt her teaching at the University of Utah, her husband was serving as a bishop in a student ward and she had four daughters under the age of seventeen with their own activities. Needless say, life was busy.
She wanted the song to carry a message of hope and peace, things she required on a day-to-day basis during this season. As she wrote the lyrics came naturally.
Her song “Where Can I Turn for Peace?” was published in the LDS Hymnal in 1985. She has remarked that the timing was “ironic.” Five months prior to the publishing a crowbar flew off the freeway and through her windshield. The incident left eight bones in her face fractured.
“I am grateful,” she had said, “for the unbelievably timely resurrection of the song that has helped so much in my own recent resurrection, a resurrection of what I might never have known without the trial…”
I, too, am grateful for this hymn and I am appreciative of Emma Lour Thayne’s words that express the peace and hope that I have come to know is only made valid through the Atonement.
The quotations and information regarding this hymn can be found in:
Our Latter-Day Hymns: The Stories and The Messages.
Our Latter-Day Hymns: The Stories and The Messages.
I am grateful for my children,
I am glad for names,
I am thankful for boundless love.
We thank you all.
A private service will be held on Friday. Nothing is needed at this time, just prayers and thoughts.
