How Zion got his name.

Here is the story behind my little miracle guy's name.

Two years before Zion was born, when we were trying to get pregnant, we were watching the Grammys. It was the year Lauren Hill debuted with her album "The Miseducation of Lauren Hill". I can't remember if she won the grammy or not, but she did perform. She sang the song "To Zion", which is about her son and choosing to keep him instead of aborting him the way her friends and family advised her. It is a very moving song of a mother's love. After hearing it Bill said to me, "Zion is a cool name." And I said "For our kid?!" I wasn't sure it fit at the time... but we put it on our list of baby names anyway, (which got very long by the way.)

Then we waited and prayed and waited and prayed for years for the stick to turn blue. After it finally did and God answered our prayers for a child, we went about the business of narrowing down our list of names. Finding out that he was a boy at the 20 week sonogram helped.

Now, I love names with meaning. I feel like saying someone's name is like declaring what that means over them and speaking that into their life. So to figure out which names were the most meaningful to us we had about 5 baby naming books and crossreferenced them continually during this process. (Do you see the research theme repeating itself here?)

And now you are saying, "Alright already! What does his name mean?!?" Well, Zion, is a biblical name. In the Bible, Zion is the name of the mountain of God and the city of God, "the place where God dwells". It also represents Christ and the new covenant where Mt. Sinai represents the law. It represents all the redemption and mercy and love God promises us through Christ. As for all those baby name books, the name Zion was in only three of the five, and in those it meant "promise" and "perfect".

Once we found out these things about the name Zion, I knew it had to be his name. Especially after all the prayer that had gone up by us and family and friends on his and our behalf to bring him into this world. He symbolized God's promise to us, his perfect provision for our desire to be parents. And calling him Zion would be speaking over him that he IS the dwelling place of God. God will live in his heart. So on August 10th, 2000 (my birthday) on a hill over looking Ventura, Bill said I could make the final choice for his name. (We were still trying to decide between Zion and Max at the time. Bill was not sure he liked such an unusual name.) I chose Zion. And then Alexander for his middle name, meaning "protector of his people". I also liked the alitteration in Zion Alexander Denzel.

When Zion was born later that year on 12-2-2000, he was all that we had prayed for and more. Our little miracle. Our perfect promise.