Why We Named Our Daughter Willow

There’s a willow tree behind our house.

It grows beside the little stream that runs across our property. Most of the time the water moves quietly: slow, easy, minding its own business. You can stand there and just listen to it.

But when the storms come through, everything changes fast. The stream swells. The water turns brown and spreads out into the yard. I’ve learned to watch the sky with that low hum of here we go already starting in my chest before the first drops fall.

Because when the water rises, something always goes.

Usually my fence.

We’ve rebuilt it so many times. Posts lean. Boards split and drift. The current finds the weak places the way water always does. I’ve stood at the window watching whole sections tumble, thinking, well. There it goes again.

But the willow is always there when the water goes down.

It isn’t the biggest tree on the property. It doesn’t command the yard the way the others do. It just stands quietly at the edge of the stream, branches hanging low, some of the leaves brushing the water.

When the wind picks up, it moves. When the stream rises and pushes against its roots, the willow bends with it. But it doesn’t let go. And when the storm is over, it’s still right where it was.

So when the time came to name our daughter, one stuck out above the rest.

We named her Willow.

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There’s a psalm that opens with the same kind of image.

Psalm 1 sets up a contrast — two ways a life can go. One drifts with whatever current is running. The other is rooted. Held in place by something deeper than circumstance.

He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither.

Not a tree hoping it gets enough rain. A tree that has put its roots beside the water and keeps drawing life from it no matter what the season looks like.

That’s what I see when I look at the willow.

Not endurance as gritting your teeth. Not strength as never bending. Roots going down into the soil and holding on while the branches move freely in the wind.

That’s what we want for our daughter. Not that she’d never feel the storm. Just that she’d be rooted deeply enough in Jesus that when the water rises — and it will — she’d still be standing when it goes back down.

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The willow shows up in other places in Scripture too.

In Leviticus, when God gave the people instructions for the Festival of Shelters, that week of remembering how he’d carried them through the wilderness, he told them to gather branches. Palm fronds, leafy boughs, and willows from the brook.

Trees that grew beside running water, gathered up and brought into the celebration.

I love that detail. The willow — the soft, flexible, water-rooted thing — carried into worship alongside everything else.

I hope her life has some of that shape to it. Not just surviving hard things, but actually rejoicing. Bringing what she has into the celebration of God’s goodness.

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And then there’s Isaiah, who describes renewal as people springing up like willows along a stream. God’s Spirit poured out, life returning to dry places, growth that looks almost effortless, not because the soil was perfect but because the water was close.

That image means a lot to me because I’m not naive about the road ahead. She’s going to have hard seasons. Confused ones. Dry ones. That’s just the shape of a human life.

But the story of Scripture is always restoration. Always and yet. The shoots come back up beside the water. Even after the driest years, willows grow again.

So when I say her name, there’s a prayer in it.

We’re asking for roots. Deep ones that draw from something that doesn’t run dry. We want her to know Jesus not just as something she believes, but as the thing she’s actually built her life around.

We’re asking that when the hard rains come and the things that seemed solid start to wash away, she’d hold.

And we’re asking that she’d carry something good into the world: into her friendships, her work, her own family someday. Something that looks like those willows lifted up in the festival. Joyful. Rooted. Honest.

The next storm will come. The stream will do what it always does.

I’ll probably lose another section of fence.

But I’ll look at the willow afterward, the way I always do. Still standing, branches moving a little in the breeze, a few leaves touching the water.

And I’ll think of her name, and say the prayer again.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​