The Name

Naming your child is such a daunting task. Will he like it? Will it represent who he is? What will others think? How will his teachers/doctors/Starbucks baristas pronounce or spell it?

Cal and I had talked about baby names when we were dating. While never officially decided, our favorites stuck around. One that kept coming up again and again was, you guessed it, Jericho. Cal's idea, like many of his others, was derived from NC State sports players {and #letsbereal I'm a little surprised Phillip Rivers Foshee was never in the running. Maybe baby number 2!). I always laughed off the name, saying with a name like Jericho he'd be destined to play sports and he better be good at it. My second thought was that people would think we'd be naming our children after sinful/corrupt people/places in the Bible. Jericho, you mean the city whose walls were knocked down by the Israelites? The next thing you know we'd be a Foshee family with Jericho, Barabbas, and Jezebel. At least we'd be memorable 😜 Also, the nicknames? Jerry? Rico? Ha, no thank you! I sometimes refer to him as "Jer" or type his name as "J." We may be from the south, but our plan is to call our boy what we named him 😉

As time went on, the name grew on me. When we got pregnant we pretty quickly decided on our girl name and our boy name. Jericho David Foshee. When we agreed on Jericho, we knew we'd have to give him a strong middle name. I had never been one to suggest family names in our past conversations, and we never had a "fully" biblical name in mind. But the more I thought about it, the more that "David" seemed to just fit. The two closest Davids in our lives are my dad, and Cal's Uncle David (we have countless other Davids in the family, too!).

These two Davids are both very special men. If you have ever been lucky enough to be guests of Aunt Roxanne and Uncle David you're bound to notice one thing: Uncle David is a servant of others. He will offer you a drink, get you your food, make sure you're comfortable, and refill said drink without you asking before he does a thing for himself. And if you pay close attention, you see that he treats Aunt Roxanne like a queen. He is so faithfully quiet in the way he serves and has such a kind heart.
My dad is very similar. A people pleaser at heart, he will make sure everyone is taken care of before he cares for himself. He is a leader who doesn't show off, but you can learn a lot if you watch him. I remember those early school mornings where he would always beat me downstairs, and I'd come down to see him quietly reading his Bible. Being an elder at our church, he leads many without them knowing that he is behind the scenes. I've learned a lot from him and Uncle David, and so their name seemed to fit into our son's so perfectly.

Our wish for Jericho David is that he is a leader. He may be a "loud" leader and bring restorative justice to a time and place of corruption (our world is so scary these days). Maybe he'll do something big like become a lawyer or a police officer. He may be a "quiet" leader who serves others first and fight for people behind the scenes. But as parents, we want to raise him into a man who is gentle in his actions, kind to all, and while he will have beliefs, that he will be willing to have conversations rather than be "right."

In our name quest we found a verse that we pray over him, and a quote that we just plain liked about leadership.

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." —Max DePree

I dont know much about Mr. DePree, but what I did find is that he was  a CEO of a company where inclusiveness was important and every voice was heard. What a lesson for all of us to sink into.

A name is just a name. It's the person behind it who matters. It's hard to name a child without knowing who he is - he eventually will have his own little personality and opinion even though that is still hard for us to imagine 7 weeks in! Thanks for reading and getting to know us as parents, and our dreams for our little boy. 💙

{And of course, closely followed is our hope and dream of him being an even more loyal NC State fan than we are. 🐺😉}