Who or what helped Us Name Our Unborn Children?

(Original title: How Crystal and Evan Named Themselves.)

Why do we come into being? Are we pushed into being from within by the impulse to be and create or, are we drawn from without by the promise of being and creation? Do we get to choose why we’re here or are we here against our will to serve a larger purpose? Are we here just to be or are we here to live, love, learn and evolve? Are we here to explore the nature of Being and Creation? Can it be all these things and more?

What/who are we? What’s reality? What’s the purpose of life? These questions have always fascinated me. When religion and science failed to provide me with satisfying answers, I broadened my search to include information from all sources, inner ones as well as outer ones. This new openness not only led to new and strange experiences, it led me back to earlier, unusual experiences that had remained unexamined due to their assumed lesser value in the general busyness of life.

In late June or early July 1969, my wife, Sandra, was almost eight months pregnant with our first child, Crystal. The afternoon was warm and humid as we lay on our bed looking through three small booklets of children’s names. We had no idea what sex our baby was; so, like most parents, we had to find names we liked for both a boy and a girl. After reading through each booklet at least three times, I rested my right arm on my forehead to quietly sift through the names still in my mind. Suddenly, another voice spoke up in my mind. It said, “Your daughter wants to be called Crystal.”

I found “Crystal” listed in two of the three booklets and remembered how much I always loved it. Hearing “Crystal” now, I remembered what happened when I saw it in the booklets earlier. It made me think of the two girls I had known with the name, Crystal. I didn’t like either one of them so how could I give that name to my daughter without associating it with their behavior? For that reason, I had continued looking for another name.

Speaking once again, the voice in my mind said: “I understand how you feel but this is your daughter and this is what she wants to be called.” Reconsidering the name, Crystal, I thought: I’ve always loved the name, Crystal, and I guess it doesn’t really matter that I don’t like the only two girls I knew with that name. Overcoming my concern, I began to get excited about the name, “Crystal.”

As I continued to play with this idea in my imagination, the image of colorful crystals appeared in my mind followed by a crystal goblet. I thought about how beautiful it was and what a nice sound crystal wine glasses make when you run a wet finger around the rim. On the negative side, I thought about how delicate crystal glasses can be. A crystal glass shatters easily when dropped on a hard surface. Before I could go any further with this idea, the other voice in my mind added, “Your daughter wants a name that means something to her, and that name is Crystal.”

Okay, okay, I do love the name so we’ll stop thinking about the negatives and call her Crystal! I rolled over to tell Sandra what had happened. She liked the name too, but added, “If we’re going to call her Crystal, I want her middle name to be Ellen.” I liked the name, Ellen, too, because I knew a woman in the Air Force whose middle name was Ellen, as in Mary Ellen, so it was a done deal. We didn’t concern ourselves with the sex of our babies before they were born because amniocentesis, which was common at this time, required the insertion of a long needle into the mother’s uterus to determine the sex. The thought of this happening gave us both chills.

Crystal Ellen Peterson was born August 26, 1969, at 8 PM by emergency Cesarean Section. Her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck and she was having difficulty breathing. Her official time of birth was three years to the hour after Sandra and I married, August 26, 1966.

Sixteen months later, in late November or early December 1970, Sandra and I were once again lying on our bed looking through names in those same three booklets. She was seven or eight months pregnant again with our second child. Just as in Crystal’s case, we had no interest in knowing what sex our newest baby was if it meant inserting a long needle into her uterus next to our baby. Again, none of the names in the booklets excited me. Again, I set the booklets aside and rested my arm on my forehead to sift through possible baby names.

As before, another voice started talking to me in my mind. It said, “Unlike your daughter, your son needs a name with no symbolic significance.” Alarm bells went off immediately after hearing this! Was my son supposed to spend time being lost in life? Why? The implication was frightening.

While pondering this idea, I thought about our experience with Crystal before she was born. With that thought, I began to look around the room for the source of the voice in my head. There it was, hanging about three feet in the air above Sandra’s head and chest. When I looked directly at it, I couldn’t see it but when I shifted my gaze just off to the side, I could. It appeared as a soft, golden globe of light about a foot and a half to two feet in diameter.

After telling Sandra about my conversation with the voice in my mind and the concerns it raised, she suggested the name “Evan”, which she saw in one of the booklets. It immediately made me think about the only “Evan” I had ever known. He was an optometrist at March Air Force Base near Riverside, California. Evan of us were stationed there between 1963 and 1964. He was a really nice guy so I was happy to offer this name to my inner friend. His response was a dry, “That’s fine.”, and that was that! When I told Sandra about it, she said she also wanted our Evan’s middle name to be Anthony, like me. On December 28, 1970, Evan Anthony Peterson was born.

These were unusual experiences. Yet, at the time, we didn’t think to examine them closer because we were both busy living life. In retrospect, I think our lack of curiosity is even stranger than the experiences themselves. Our lack of questioning testifies to the hypnotic power of society’s “official” belief systems. How often do we have strange experiences like these and sweep them under the rug out of fear of the unknown and the ridicule that might be leveled at us?

How many soon-to-be parents get help naming their babies? I suspect it happens often and in many different ways. Again, what and who are we? What is reality? I think there’s more to who we are and what reality is, than we care to admit. What do you think?

A final note. Even though it was almost directly over her head, Sandra couldn’t see the golden globe of energy communicating with me. In her own words: “At that time, I just wasn’t ready to go there.” Also, neither Sandra, nor I, questioned the voice inside my mind when it told us the sex of our children before they were born. It was all so real and mysterious, we just accepted it as truth. Besides, we knew we’d find that out when they were born.

If you have had similar experiences, please share them. Use the Contact Form on the Main Menu at the top of this page. Who knows, maybe some publishing company will want to collect our stories and publish them in a book.

Roger Peterson (Pete) – https://realtalkworld.com

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having (creating) a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin