A little of this, a little of that...

Dear Eli,

I've waited a couple of weeks to write you because it's been a little stressful for me. To begin, school is kicking my boo-tay. Not that it's your problem, you just know I feel guilty every time I have to leave you, and, well... this year is just hard. Then, I got wind of a young father I went to high school with who lost his son. He was a year old. The night that I heard that, I sat in your room and watched you sleep. I prayed to God that he would give that young family peace and comfort, and then I asked that he never take you from me. To be honest, I needed a couple of weeks to process that all. I can't think about their situation without crying because of course, I think of you. So I just needed some time.

So what do you want to talk about today? I was thinking about telling you how we chose your name. Would you like to hear that? Ok, so here goes...

Remember that I told you at first I thought you were a girl. We only had girl names picked out and we had narrowed it down to a couple front runners. I wouldn't even consider boy names because I just KNEW you were a chick.  As we can now see, I was wrong.

That October afternoon when we went to see if you really were a girl, your daddy and I sat nervously at a the special sonography place. Beyond just wanting to see what you were, we wanted to make sure you were ok, and we knew that if something was wrong, we'd be able to see it... on a GIANT, 3D movie screen.

So there we were, nervous, pukey (at least I was), and excited. They finally called our name and back we went. As the lady is moving the wand over my belly, she stops. Your daddy was holding on to my arm... and then she said the magic words: "I see a penis!"

Your daddy squeezed my arm and I cried because not only were you healthy, but you were gonna be a BOY! Just to be fair, I would have cried if you had been a girl, too. I was very weepy when I was pregnant. Actually, I'm pretty weepy all the time... you'll realize this as you get older.

As we left, we called our families and told them the good news... then we looked at each other and said, "Well, I guess we can throw all the girl names out the window!"

We started looking at biblical names. We knew we wanted you to be a man of God, and what better way to start you off than by naming you after one of His servants? We knew that names like Matthew and John were out--too common. I liked Luke, but one of our friends had recently named her baby that same name, and we didn't want to seem like we were copy cats. We tossed around Noah. Noah Boehman. Sounds good, right? But again... too many Noahs.

Then I said Eli. Eli. Eli. Eli. We liked. We loved it! So I started doing some research on Eli in the bible... turns out he was kind of a bad father. A bit spineless, in fact. I was devestated.

I ended up telling this story to a woman your daddy and I work with, and she ended up talking me back into naming you Eli. She explained that while Eli from the bible had his flaws, he was a man of God. And besides that, some of the greatest men in the bible weren't exactly wonderful men, but God used them to relay his message. David, for example, was kind of a...errr... well... he just wasn't that great. But we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God, and Eli from the bible was no different.

After that, Eli was your name. We called you that from that moment on... and prayed to God that you looked like an Eli, because if you didn't, we didn't have a backup. Thankfully, though, when you were born, you looked like you could support that name, and thus, it was.

So Eli, I'm charging you to live up to the name you were given. While I expect you to stumble at some points in your life, never forget that you were named after one of God's men, and He will always guide you. I love you to the moon and back, Eli James.

Love,

Mommy