The Name Victor

Ben and I were driving somewhere, discussing baby names early last year—before we were pregnant. Victor. We both liked it, and we both liked the association to a very special young man at the South Site. Almost immediately, it became a top choice boy’s name.



We knew Victor Manuel Watters as the adopted son of Mike and Deb Watters, and the story of his life is a trophy of God’s grace. Victor was 9 when the Watters family encountered him at St. Paul’s Children’s Hospital. The Watters were bringing their daughter Corrine in for treatment of Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, and Victor—a ward of the state—was in a nearby room receiving treatment for the exact same kind of cancer.

By God’s providence, the Watters family was able to adopt Victor, and when he joined their family, he also became a part of Bethlehem’s South Site. God did a wonderful work in his heart, and he was part of a video not long after, recounting the story of how he trusted in Jesus as his Savior. We loved seeing him serve as an usher every week, handing out bulletins and passing the offering baskets with a big smile.

The battle with cancer was not over, though. Throughout last year, as I struggled through some hard months of pregnancy with our own Victor, we prayed and waited as Victor Watters’s prognosis, medically-speaking, grew more and more grave. As the cancer spread, family and friends gathered to say good-bye, and we saw evidence of an amazing grace at work in his heart. Even struggling for breath, he wanted to share verses and the gospel with all those who came.

Finally, on Wednesday, September 7, 2011, Victor Manuel Watters finished his race.

His funeral service was on September 11, 2011, my 30th birthday.

Ben was honored to read a Scripture passage in the service, while I watched from the balcony, feeling the little stirrings of our Victor in my belly and weeping with both joy and heartache.

The passage that Ben read was 1 Corinthians 15:50-58—the passage which also describes the second and bigger reason that we wanted to name our son Victor, after the Great Victor over sin and death:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (54-57).

May your life shine with the grace of that victory, purchased for you by Jesus, little guy.