Long Overdue Announcement

(It's been so long since I posted, I'm not sure I remember how to do this anymore!!)

After three months of bedrest, hospitalizations, awful medications, tears and prayers, we made it to 36 weeks exactly...and then the twins decided they were ready to take on the world. Joshua Caleb and Isabella Ruth were born on Father's Day, weighing in at 5 pounds each.


I debated whether to publish their names - and I cheerfully reserve the right to edit this post in the future and remove them - but they have special meaning to us that I want to share. Since these little ones are a testimony of God's faithfulness to us (and are really a story of redemption in and of themselves), we wanted to give them names that reflected this heritage.

We chose the name Joshua Caleb years ago; really, it's a name I adored before I ever even met C. The story of Joshua and Caleb in the Old Testament has always been a special inspiration for me. If you're not familiar with it, you can find it in Numbers 13 and 14. God told Moses to send men to check out the land of Canaan that He was giving to the Israelites. The scouts came back with glowing reports of the land itself - fertile ground, flowing with milk and honey - but also a warning about the land's inhabitants. All of the men who journeyed into Canaan claimed that the land was populated by people who would be formidable foes, and who were best left alone. All of the explorers, that is, but two: Joshua and Caleb. Even while the Israelites threatened to stone them, Joshua and Caleb proclaimed that surely the Lord would go with them into this land as He had promised. They trusted God even in the face of opposition and the threat of death, from their own people. Joshua means "Jehovah is salvation" and one of the meanings of Caleb is "faithful; bold."

We also wanted to choose a strong name for our daughter. Isabella means "consecrated to (or set apart for) God" and Ruth means "friend" and "compassion." The Old Testament story of Ruth is another of my favorites. After the death of her husband, Ruth gave up any hope she had of remarrying and having a secure future when she chose instead to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, now also a widow. She left behind everything she had ever known to move to a strange land, out of loyalty to Naomi. She put her trust in the God of the Israelites even when the future was uncertain and bleak; Ruth was a woman of excellence in everything she did. In the end, God blessed her more than she could ever have imagined - including giving her a husband and a son (who eventually became David's grandfather).

I'll post the birth story separately, since I'm sure that's not something everyone wants to read! :) I still can't believe that after everything we've been through - our little miracles are finally here and three weeks old already! (I also can't believe how much my muscles have atrophied during all that bedrest. Yikes - get out the Denise Austin DVD's!!) But ohhh...it's so good to surf the internet on a real computer again instead of my little phone!