A Name: It Was Him All Along

Asher: A Hebrew name meaning ‘happy or blessed’, and indeed we are. 

I hate choosing names. The finely-tuned list every teenage girl spends years curating? Pointless. You can throw that bad boy in the bin. Mix a cocktail of pregnancy hormones, general indecisiveness, Instagram Babies left, right and centre; and a husband with very different tastes, to the point of wondering how you’re married at all; and you will hate every name on that list. 

In general, I often find myself ‘going off’ things quickly (hello millennial commitment issues), which is fine when it’s a wall colour, but not so fine when it’s a human. 

Towards the end of my pregnancy, I’m hissing at anyone who mentions names. But after our baby comes howling into the world and we get over the shock of the gender, Paddy broaches the name conversation with, I imagine, the same caution he’d approach a rampant dog.

“Um… Honey… I know we didn’t expect a boy, but um… they’ll be asking if we have a name soon…” 

And to my surprise, I don’t feel stressed. God has known him all along, I realise.  

***

It’s 2015. Reuben, my oldest son, is nearly two years old, and we’re reading his children’s Bible before bed. I’m still finding my feet in the world of Christian Parenting, mostly feeling like I'm stumbling around in the dark and bashing my toes off things, but there is one thing I’m sure of: I want him to love the Jesus I love. A children’s Bible seems like a good place to start, and Joseph ‘with the fancy coat’ is a regular crowd pleaser, obviously. I’m studying Theology at university, but this children’s bible is where I first learn that one of Joseph’s brothers was called Reuben. 

While pregnant with my Reuben, I really wanted to name the baby in my belly Asher, but I discovered it on some picture-perfect ‘mom’ blog where all the children were blonde and wore Ralph Lauren. It’s way too American, I ignorantly concluded. Already entering motherhood feeling the need to prove myself as a proper mum, I didn’t want to add an unusual or weird name to the mix. My situation was already worth gossiping about. No one needed the opportunity or more permission to think typical young mum…
Reuben has his own name story, but here’s the short version: I liked that it was different but not different enough to make people say, “She called him what now?!” And I still think his name is *chef’s kiss*. 

Reuben looks at me with his giant, incredulous ‘What?!’ eyes, with strands of his far-too-long shiny hair caught in his eyelashes. He has his trademark evening outfit: a Mickey Mouse dressing gown and his fiery orange fox slippers. Finlay Foxes, we call them. A nod to our surname at the time.

The discovery of this Biblical Reuben is a shared delight but the next delight is mine alone. Joseph and Reuben also had a brother named Asher. 

It’s a Hebrew name?! I internally exclaim, in part to myself and in part to God, as if this is news to him too. Did you know this?! I can imagine myself dramatically questioning Jesus if he were sitting in the room with us. After bedtime, I swap the dinner dishes for my own Bible and a detailed google search, ransacking both for everything I can find out about Asher, as though my whole life is riding on it. Little do I know, my future kind of is. I read the meaning, ‘happy or blessed’. That’s exactly what I’ll be if I ever have another son. At this point I’m very very very very very single, but I still ask God to bless Reuben with a little brother called Asher, you know, if it’s His will. Please make it your will. It’s less of a Dear God, will you do xyz prayer, and more of a *deep sigh* it would be really lovely if this was your plan prayer. The type that isn’t really a prayer, but you know He sees and hears, so you ask anyway. Those too-unrealistic-to-put-into-words prayers.

I don’t do it on purpose, but I tuck Asher away in my heart (not on a list) and over the years, he becomes a real person to me - in the least crazy way possible. My friends know I love the name, as friends do, and they often hypothesise, “When you have Asher…” and my stomach twists a little each time they do. God knows, I reassure myself. 

***

Almost three years later, on a grey January afternoon, I’m walking to meet my new ‘friend’ Paddy in the Student Lounge of our university library. He just Facebook messaged me to come down from where I was studying. I thought he’d be busy with classes all day and it takes all my strength not to sprint down the stairs and appear in front of him in seconds, a cloud of smoke and Theology books behind me. I waste time going to the toilet, even though I peed fifteen minutes ago. I don’t want to look too keen, I really want to tell the student whose desk is beside the bathrooms.

When I get there he’s sitting with two coffees and two Milky Ways. He’d buy me a giant traybake the size of my face if I’d let him, but he knows a ‘wee Milky Way’ is my favourite afternoon snack of choice - a light chocolate hit that’s also light on the chocolate guilt. The fact he knows this means more than the giant traybake. I am filled with hope and I chastise myself for it. Don’t be silly, he’s nice to everyone. We chat about an article he loves so much he copied and pasted the whole thing into his iPhone notes. He needs my phone number to send me the note. 

I die. 

He has to head back to class and I realise he spent his break with me instead of the other students in his year group. 

I die a little more. 

Before leaving, as he always does, he winks and says, “Be blessed, Reb”. 

Later that night, I write reams of my own notes under the article. The author is asking what it means for a Christian to be ‘Blessed’. Hashtag-blessed is a whole thing on Social Media right now. Does being blessed mean a loving marriage, obedient children, a successful career, a comfortable bank account or trusted friends? The author points out there are 112 references to blessing in the Bible and none of them are connected to these earthly ‘blessings’. Instead, blessing is usually connected to poverty and trials. It seems that Biblical Blessing comes in the shape of anything that brings us to our knees and makes us feel our need for God. While trials aren’t blessings in themselves, they are channels for God’s greatest blessing - God himself. When we have that, rather when we have HIM, we are truly blessed. 

The anti-depressants I’m currently weaning off glare at me from my bedside table and concerns about Reuben’s behaviour weigh heavy on my shoulders.

I write a note to Paddy: Do you realise every time you say ‘Be Blessed’ or you pray for someone to be blessed, you’re basically asking God to send them a trial? You’re asking Him to do whatever He needs to do to bring us closer to Him, to total dependence on Him, and to love Him more? That’s terrifying. I don’t want to know what ‘blessing’ He has in store for me next. But it does transform how I see my current trials and I do love Him.

We continue to talk into the early hours of the morning and I want to tell him about my future son, Asher, but I decide to play it cool. God knows, and that’s enough for now. 

18 months later, we’re sitting in a coffee shop overlooking the furious North Coast waves. We’re talking about how glorious it will be when we’re married and have family holidays here with Reuben. I still haven’t told him about our (no longer just ‘my’) Asher, who will obviously be on these trips. I set my coffee down, look him in the eyes, and tell him there’s something he needs to know before we get married. The fear in his eyes reveals he’s hanging on my every word, so I quickly tell him I’m joking. I tell him the whooooole Asher story, trying not to reveal how much this means to me or how crazy I probably am.

He loves it, of course. 

“You weren’t really joking, were you?” He says.

“No”, I smile sheepishly.  

***

The midwife leaves us to have the precious ‘golden hour’ I’ve requested in my Birth Preferences. To the onlooker it’s anything but golden, despite the April sun gleaming through the windows. This new baby hasn’t stopped screaming since he arrived. We’re both still naked and I’m wrestling him to get some skin-to-skin, the limp hospital sheets attempting to give me some dignity but I just. Don’t. Care. I’m in shock, half-laughing, half-crying, and still asking for more gas and air because my lady bits are also in shock. Paddy is pouring some tea and marvelling at our new son. I’m vaguely aware of All Sons and Daughters playing in the background from our speaker and I’m not sure which song, but it’s peaceful. In spite of the animalistic sounds coming from the baby and me, to us this is golden. 

When Paddy cautiously brings up the name subject, I’m surprised at my lack of stress. I’ve just spent the last 10 months in despair over it. Everyone told us it was a girl. Good, godly, sane people that we know and love and trust, told us they had a ‘feeling’, or they just ‘knew’. We told each other we didn’t believe them, but when a boy came out, we realised we had believed every single one of them. 

We had kind of settled on a girl name and although we didn’t love it, we had long given up. “It’ll do”, I grumpily told Paddy a couple of days before going into labour. 

And this is where you all expect me to tell you obviously our boy name was Asher, right? 

Righhhhhtt. 

Well, no. Actually, during my first trimester, a couple we know called their baby Asher and I kid you not, I went to bed and cried all day (hey raging pregnancy hormones, that you?) and I spent the rest of the pregnancy trying to come up with another name. Why can’t I call all my children Reuben, I lamented irrationally. 

It wasn’t that I’m against there being multiple Ashers. I’ve met a couple more since then and the more the better, I say. No, that wasn’t it at all. It was just that I’d always pictured Asher and when I saw this other little baby who didn’t look like the boy I’d been imagining for years, for some reason I felt totally disconnected from it. I couldn’t picture him anymore and he didn’t feel like mine. I know, I know. I can’t make sense of it either. My brain is a mystery, guys. A total mystery (I’m pretty sure I just heard Paddy’s hearty Amen to this from upstairs). I approached my due date focussing on girls names.

But now, in the delivery room, something has happened since the arrival of this baby earth-side. I don’t know whether I’m on a high from the smooth birth (I mean, as smooth as it can be) redeeming my first traumatic delivery, or whether God has just gifted me something really kind. But I connect with this baby as soon as I see him. I don’t have that ew, who is this slimy alien creature moment. It’s more of a oh, there you are - welcome, old friend moment. All of the cliches become true and all of the gender or name issues become irrelevant. He’s real, he’s here and he’s everything I imagined him to be. Feeling more seen than I’ve ever felt in my whole life, I whisper my thanks to the Lord. He knew. 

I still like our other boy name, but now that we know him, there’s only one name it can be. 

I laugh and finally respond to Paddy’s hesitant question.

“Of course it’s a boy! It was Asher all along.” 

———————

This post was originally part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "A Name".