Our Son’s Name and the Story Behind It…

When Bryce and I found out we were having a boy, we tossed around a few names…but there was one that we kept coming back to.

You see…Bryce and I both spent nearly every summer of our childhood and teenage years at Camp Tippecanoe Baptist Camp in Northern Indiana. It was there that we not only first met, but where we also both grew deeper in our faith and relationship with Christ, where our passions for camp ministry first were sparked, and where we have developed some of the deepest and most meaningful friendships of our lives.

That couldn’t have happened without the incredible couple behind Camp Tippy: Max and Rebecca Scott. Every child that has ever stepped foot on to that camp property has become one of their own children (Bryce and I to this day consider Rebecca to be another one of our “moms”). Never has there been a more perfect duo to love God and to love on kids who need love than Max and Rebecca.

I wasn’t personally as close to Max as Bryce was. But Bryce often shares a story about how Max changed his life with a simple wooden bench. Bryce will tell anyone that as a child, he didn’t have good work ethic. He was a very kind, respectful, polite young man…but he didn’t ever have to work very hard for anything. And then he went to camp. He loved it so much and had so much fun, that he decided to come back the next week to volunteer. He thought he was getting a free week of camp…but what he got instead made him into the hard-working man that he is today. Max told him since he was volunteering, that he needed to paint a bench for him. So Bryce quickly slapped a coat of paint on it. Max came back and told him that he needed to repaint it…that it wasn’t good enough. So Bryce painted it again. This happened several more times, and Bryce was feeling super frustrated that he had to spend his whole week at camp painting that bench. By the end of the week, and after at least five times painting it…Max finally approved of his paint job. And Bryce felt proud. He came back a few more weeks that summer to volunteer, and spent a lot of his time with Max in his golf cart, making lots of wonderful memories. He decided to come back the following summer to be on paid staff at the camp, but Max wasn’t there. He passed away on October 22, 2008–only a few months after he made Bryce repaint that bench so many times. Bryce came back every summer after that on staff at Tippy, and I continued coming back each year as a counselor.

Camp Tippy has been such an incredibly important part of our lives…and instrumental in molding us into the people that we are today. That’s why we decided to get married there, and why we have decided to name our son after Max–who helped make Tippy the life-changing place that it still is today.

We called Rebecca (aka Mom) about a month ago to ask for her blessing to name our son after her husband, and she graciously gave it to us. So on May 2, Max Edward will join us in this world. And I can only hope and pray that our little Max will have a heart for loving God, serving others, and working so hard just as Max Scott did.