Getting to know Rockam

Joe and I still need to post something about Rockam's name, (pronounced rock-um). I got a good 5 hours of sleep last night, so, here it goes! The name is an Anglecized version of the Hebrew word racham, which means mercy or compassion. Before we knew the gender of our baby, Joe heard the word "Mercy" from the Lord during his prayer times. Assuming that meant we were going to have a girl, we eventually settled on the name Mercy (as opposed to Mercedes and a few other variations, including the female Hebrew of Racham: Rachmiela.) So, imagine our surprise when the ultrasound revealed Mercy wouldn't be such a suitable name afterall -- unless we wanted to bestow on our son countless years of playground taunting and a life-long struggle to prove his manliness!

Joe felt strongly that we needed to retain the meaning of mercy in whatever name we chose... so we started spending lots of time with the Strong's concordance, which has several versions, both Hebrew and Greek, of the word "mercy." For those of you into linguistics, Racham is number 7356 in Strong's, meaning compassion and tender mercies. The vast majority of verses it appears in are in Psalms and it always seems to be paired with the phrase "unfailing love."

Joe and I feel that Stephen, which means "crown" in Greek, is like a prize or treasure the Lord gave us for running His race these years. Rockam, on the other hand, is just His tender mercy, completely beyond what we could have ever earned or deserved.

So far, this sweet little baby has lived up to his name. He's pretty tough for a little guy and full of vigor, so a manly name with "rock" in it suits him. Also, he's been a really great sleeper (something Stephen definitely wasn't)... so that's a major mercy for me!

Stephen has been an excellent big brother to his protege in the munchie arts. He's learning to comfort him with "Don't cry Little Brother" at night and he always lets me know when Rockam is crying. They're sharing a room and so far, the relationship is amicable... though I'm expecting there will be nights when they take turns waking each other up. :-)