How we decided on "Mercy"

My dear college roomate Rebecca (affectionately know as "Monster" by all of her college housemates =) asked me how we came up with the name Mercy for our first baby. After typing out the response on email, I realized that the full story was not yet put on this blog, so here it is: Our 1st baby's testimony or "life-verse" is referenced in 1 Corinthians 1: 3,4. God gave me the name Mercy for this child as a testimony to how he would use her short life & our suffering and the overall story of her as a bridgebuilder between Him and others. He will use it to comfort others who had gone through the same or similar thing & as help for those who will go through similar things. In a dream, I also got the name "Anna" as a middle name for her. The problem is we were never sure if it was a girl or boy (too soon to tell @ 9 weeks). So I checked around online and found that Mercy can be used as a unisex name for boy or for girl. We speak about her as if she is a girl because that's what we believe to be true, but since we can't be sure, I leave the Anna off but just hold it in my heart.