Serena's Name

I have had a few people ask how we came to name our sweet Serena. It's not a big crazy story or anything, but I thought I would share how we landed on it.


After Serena was born, we were given 4 days to decide on a name. (It's technically 5, but we lost the first day since she was born at 11:56 p.m!) We were SO sure this baby was a boy that we had a boy name picked out and ready to go, but hadn't even discussed potential girl names. (The conversation usually went like this: "What are we going to name this baby if it's a girl??" or "Oh man, if it's a girl I don't know what we're going to do about naming her! Haha!")

This pregnancy felt much more similar to Wells' pregnancy and none of my usual "girl symptoms" seemed to be present. EVERYONE else seemed to think it was a boy too - including tons of people I didn't even know! I had strangers on the street of New York City point at my belly in passing and say "That's a boy!" We bought a few boy outfits, a "little brother" onesie... we were ready for our boy. It just FELT like a boy to me!

Needless to say, we were so shocked when we realized it was a girl. We had been tossing around one name, but it seemed weird to me to pick something after only a few minutes of TRUE consideration. So once we settled into bed and got a few minutes of sleep, we went back to look at THE list. It's always been much harder for me to pick girl names, so I have a list of girl names that consists of a lot of random names that I heard once and kind of liked.

I felt weird about picking just a "random" name though. I was really hoping that we could pick a name that MEANT something to us - one that would be reflective of her birth, in some way. We had been tossing around things like Luna, Stormy, Rain, Faith... none of those felt right either though.

One of the names on my (very long) list was "Sabina". While Ryan was looking over this list, he came to that name (which he clearly didn't like haha) and said "What is this name? Did you mean Serena?" (Which is still weird to me bc in my mind, the next logical step from "Sabina" would have been "Sabrina"...) but when he said Serena I felt it in my bones. I feel like we aren't quite hippie enough to go with "Serenity" but I thought Serena was a nice "version" of that. I just knew that was her name the second I heard it.

I'll never forget the night that Serena came into this world. But I wanted her to have name that would remind me of her birth every time I said it. When I hear the name "Serena", I remember the peace and calm we felt. I remember watching the crazy storm outside of our windows while laboring with her. I remember hearing God's words - "Trust me" - the day before her birth when I was doubting and fearful. I remember feeling His presence and peace and guidance as we brought her into this world.

Serena. She is my calm in the storm. My reminder that in the middle of the biggest storms, when I put my faith in the Lord - that's where my peace is.