WHAT'S IN A NAME.

The midwives were still buzzing about the room, cleaning up and checking the baby, when Hannah and I looked at each other and asked the obvious question, "So what's his name?"You would think, having had nine months to chew it over, we would have been better prepared for this moment––many people have their babies named long before they're even pregnant. Not us. We weren't prepared at all. All the way up until our baby was born, we were still waffling.But Further just felt right. It was a name we'd talked about before, but it wasn't a family name. It didn't have any deeper meaning like "We want him to go FURTHER in his life," or some such thing. We just heard it once and liked it, and felt like it fit him. So after trying on a couple of names, Further was the one that stuck.But the other day I was sitting with Hannah and Further and I noticed Hannah's tattoo on her hip. She'd received it several years ago and the tattoo artist even told her if she ever had a baby, it would ruin it. Hilariously, she assured him that would not be a problem. She was never having children.The tattoo, however––which Hannah drew herself––is of Aslan, the lion from the Chronicles of Narnia (and, incidentally, the "God" character). And underneath Aslan is a banner that reads, "Further up, Further in." Neither of us had thought about it before he was born, but there is something beautiful about the fact that the random adverb we chose to call our son just so happened to be tattooed on Hannah long before he was ever born. Long before she even wanted to have children. So even when we had no idea what his name was, I guess Aslan must have known.- Jesse