I was standing in the middle of our basement storage closet when my phone rang. A newborn baby boy needed a safe place.

Over the past 10 years of foster care, we’ve collected just about everything you can imagine to care for an infant: pack-and-plays, car seats, blankets, swings and every pacifier marketed as “the best” (none of which ever seem to beat those little green ones from the hospital).

But there was one thing we didn’t have — a name. And this baby boy needed a name.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The hospital gave him a name from a generic, alphabetized list they use in such circumstances. But that wasn’t his name. A name is more than a label — it carries belonging, identity, value … love. To receive a name is to receive a designation that tells you and the world who you are, whose you are and who belongs to you.

So, in the middle of that basement closet, I called my wife and kids to join me. I told them about the baby boy with no name, and together we said “yes.” We would give him a name.

The next day, we picked him up from the hospital. All we were given were a few sparse details on a heavily redacted discharge paper and a note that his favorite nurse had discovered he liked to be swaddled. At home, we learned that he loved to be cuddled, that his wide infant eyes were thirsty for connection, that he was particularly comforted by the feeling of my beard up against his smooth face and that he preferred falling asleep to the background noise of our other children rather than silence.

We quickly grew to love him. To be loved by him. And out of that love, we gave him his name. A name we thought would be his only one. That is, until months later when we received another phone call. It turned out he had another name. Not the name the hospital assigned to him, but the name his mother gave him when he was born. A name that, just like our name, represents who he is, whose he is and who he belongs to. A name given in love.

We were shocked. After all, he already had a name! This was not what we thought we were saying yes to in the middle of our basement closet. But as he began to know and be known by his mother, we came to see something we never could have imagined at the beginning: a baby boy who started out with no name is now so loved that he has two.

Today, this baby boy no longer needs a safe place — he is home with his mother. And while we continue to grieve the loss this represents for us (and for him), we also give thanks. Because the blessing of a name belongs not only to the one who receives it, but also to the one who gives it. And we would never take back the gift of giving him his name.