We’d like to welcome Anna Elizabeth Heerema to the world.

Born June 2nd, 2011, 7:56am in Ames Iowa at Mary Greeley Medical Center.

Vital Stats

• Sex: Female
• Height: 20″
• Weight: 7lbs. 15oz
• Head: 14.5″
• Hair: lots
• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Class: Mammalia
• Order: Primates
• Family: Hominidae
• Genus: Homo
• Species: H. Sapiens
• Race: Human
• Alignment: Chaotic Good
• Class: Princess (Baby)

Meaning of the Name

Anna is a latinized Greek version of the Hebrew name Hannah, meaning “Grace” or “Favor”.

Elizabeth is a Greek translation of the Hebrew name Elisheva meaning “God’s Promise”, “God’s Oath”, or possibly “I am God’s Daughter”.

Of course all these names bear great significance to us, but our intended meaning is something along the lines of “Grace, God’s Promise”, which is the most important concept one can grasp. Also, we just like the sound of “Anna Elizabeth Heerema”.

Namesakes

There are several people we have in mind specifically with these names. Anna (being a fairly common name) is frequent in our family in various forms. Nancy, Diane, Hannah, Ann is the middle name of my sister and mother and also Nancy’s sister. It is also the name of several great grandparents: Nancy’s Great Grandmother Anna Elias, and Great Great Grandmother Anna Wigdahl.

Most preciously to us, two biblical figures:

First, the Asherite prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel, who was in the temple when the infant Jesus was presented and upon Jesus’ arrival there “began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38)

Also, Elizabeth, relative to Mary the mother of Jesus, who recognized Jesus as the Messiah before he was even born. (Luke 1:39-45).

Both these women waited long for God to answer various prayers of theirs (Anna was widowed at a very early age and spent her widowed years in prayer at God’s temple waiting for the promised redemption, Elizabeth was “very old” when she conceived her firstborn), and both were let into the “inside track” of God’s plan: Jesus.

Our prayer for our Anna is that God “lets her in on” His plan: Jesus. This is our highest desire and greatest goal for all our children, receiving the lion’s share of our prayer and effort in their lives.

Thanksgiving and Amazement

I am amazed and thankful for many things. I cannot believe I am a father to three children, let alone three girls. I consider this an honor, privilege, high calling, and a whole lot of fun. I have grown accustomed to pink princesses, and I think trucks and guns would take some getting used to (though I’m sure the adjustment would come ;-)).

Nancy never ceases to amaze me. She went through a Cesarian section smiling (yes. smiling.) And has born through the last two days of recovery with amazing poise. It hasn’t been easy for her. God has been merciful and given us both strength.

I am also very grateful for and astounded by the incredible health care we have here in Ames: the access to medicine, the technology – even just our own private, clean room and a dedicated ward for this purpose. Our anesthesiologist made reference to his medical mission in Guatemala and our desire to complain that we weren’t in the super-deluxe birthing suite and instead had to “settle” for a small recovery room evaporated. We have it good.

Thanks for all of your well-wishes and prayers. We feel very loved.

Soli deo gloria.

After seven, long, happy years as a Dreamhost customer, the last straw has been added to the pile.  A fileserver apparently crashed, losing all of my current data, along with my archived data.  Fortunately, this did not include my MySQL databases, so all of my text content is intact, but does include all other files: layouts, designs, css, javascript, templates, and photos.

As such, this blog is looking a little… sparse.

It does give me an interesting opportunity to “reboot” my personal web sites; rethinking their purpose in the universe, which I will be taking some time to do over the coming weeks.  Hopefully something cool will result on the other side.

Thanks for bearing with me in the meantime.

About three years ago, Matt came home from some far-and-away business travels all excited about eating sushi. I was definitely, um, hesitant to say the least about trying it, but after a taste, I realized that it was something for which I could probably develop a taste. Eventually, spider rolls (fried soft-shell crab…no real spider in it ;) ) became my favorite but I still turned up my nose at the actual raw fish rolls. But recently, I have turned over to the dark side…and now I really, really like the raw fish stuff. Matt and I now drool at the mention of a fancy rainbow roll. Good sushi is definitely not a budget food, so to tide us over between visits to our favorite local spot, Matt has become very adept at making homemade California rolls. They’re definitely not fancy, but we love them!

We have yet to find a really good source of sushi-grade fish (as in here in Ames…any hints, anyone?) so we just use what we fondly call “Krabb” (imitation crab). And yes, we like to spell it out when we talk about it. :) A little avocado, cucumber, seasoned rice and KRABB on nori (seaweed paper) and don’t forget the sesame seed! DeLISH!

C.J. Mahaney wrote a great article in response to a parent’s letter asking this:

I am afraid they (my children) do have hard thoughts of God and that’s largely because of my own sinfulness (anger, impatience, anxiety), which I am eager to continue killing by the Spirit. But apart from that, the question I have is, how do we as parents insist that our children obey us in the Lord without cultivating hard thoughts of Him?

I love his response to this.

In case you hadn’t heard in other channels, I am leaving AOL to go to work for Desiring God. More details at mattheerema.com