I was baptized this morning.
There were no strings attached. It wasn’t a prerequisite to becoming a church member or taking communion, it wasn’t anything I’ve been persuaded or expected to do, nor was it something I’m doing to make myself “look better” in the eyes of the church or my family.
I had nothing to prove, and that’s exactly the way I wanted it to be.
This technically wasn’t my first go-round with baptism either. My parents elected to not baptize me as a baby so I would make the choice myself later in life (which is something I very much appreciate as an adult.) When I was maybe 12 or 13 my mother asked me if I’d ever thought about it. I hadn’t really, but by the time I had given it some thought, my family was in the process of switching churches so there wasn’t really a good time. The new church we began attending had a tradition regarding baptism and church membership – every 9th grader went through “confirmation class,” at the end of which they would be a member of the church, and baptized if they hadn’t already been. I was in 10th grade when we officially made this church our home, so I missed confirmation class by a year. Fast-forward two years, and I decided to be baptized. My parents were becoming members of that church as well, and we sat through a crash-course in membership with the pastor. At some point in the months that followed I was baptized. I answered a few questions with “I do.” There was water sprinkled on my head. That’s all I remember, to be perfectly honest. Not that it wasn’t important to me – the details are just kind of fuzzy.
So I’ve been baptized before. I was 17, which is perfectly old enough to consider this an “adult” decision. So why was I doing it again?
While I grew up going to church and made a personal decision to follow Jesus when I was 14, my faith hit a roadblock in college. I was having an identity crisis about my choice of school and major and slowly sinking into a depressive state. I was moody, reclusive, and starting to resent my small Christian college where I was required to go to chapel and be told how great life was because of Jesus. I came to my breaking point in November, when I learned that one of my best friends had died from sudden cardiac arrest. The grief and trauma of losing my friend began to turn into anger, and due to the specific circumstances of what happened, I had nothing and no one to be angry at but God. This “good,” and “just,” and “righteous” God I had been told about and thought I believed in for my entire life up until that point didn’t seem so good, just, or righteous anymore.
I stopped going to church. I went to chapel purely out of obligation. I mentally checked out during prayers or conversations about God. I was over it. At every mention of scripture or God, I internally reacted with skepticism. How did anyone know for sure anyway? And did it even matter at all?
Eventually I basically told God, who I was pretty sure wasn’t listening anyway, to leave me alone. If all of my misery and pain was part of some supernatural “plan,” I didn’t want any part of it. I knew I had reached a low point when I confessed to a friend “I don’t think I believe in God anymore.” I had been thinking it for weeks at that point, but saying it out loud made it real to me.
I was lucky. Eventually, only by the grace of God, I got turned back around. (You can read about the details of this in my previous post). I was able to see past my doubt and cynicism, and took the road home where, not unlike the prodigal son, my Father was waiting with open arms.
Anyway, what does this have to do with baptism? My return to God was almost exactly four years ago (March 11th is a day I will always remember – again, see my previous post for more) and for a while I had been thinking about “re-dedicating myself.” I knew I technically didn’t need to do anything, but I still wanted to. I had thought about being re-baptized before, but I assumed that this was something you could only do once, and put away the idea.
Then, about two months ago, I was in church and heard my pastor talk about a special baptism service. (I go to a larger church so they only do it twice a year of the sake of logistics.) He said that this was open to anyone in the church, even if you had been baptized before – if you were interested in re-dedicating yourself.
There it was – the phrase that I had been thinking about. I decided to look back into baptism, first doing my research to make sure that there was nothing about being baptized a second time that would violate scripture. (There wasn’t – if anything, a lot of denominations think it doesn’t count if you don’t go underwater.) I prayed about it. I spoke to a trusted friend. And then when I decided I was really going to go for it, I spoke to my pastor. I told him my story, and he told me it was more than acceptable to be baptized again. Not only that, but this didn’t mean that my first baptism didn’t count. This was a new part of my walk with God, and that doesn’t revoke the validity of anything from before. That affirmation gave me the courage I needed to take the next step.
This morning church today, I stood in the baptismal tank (laugh if you will, but there’s no other way to describe it) with Pastor Bob as a video I had previously recorded of my testimony played. (And let me tell you, there are few things more unnerving than seeing your face on a gigantic screen in front of your whole church.) In the video I talked of my battle with depression and anxiety, when I turned away from God, and how I came back. That he shows me is grace and mercy day in and day out even when I fall short.
So I went under. I came back up. I almost lost my footing in the tank and nearly wiped out in front of the whole church. But there was something amazingly refreshing about coming back out of the water. Like everything was new again. After I changed out of my wet clothes and went back to my seat, I noticed I was feeling a lot of tension in my upper body – specifically my shoulders and arms. Maybe I had been clenching my fists as my arms were crossed over my chest before going into the water. I don’t know. But I thought it would relax a bit as I sat in the sanctuary during the rest of the service. The weird thing was, that it didn’t, and this was different than regular nervous or muscular tension.
That’s when I realized something: It wasn’t tension I felt in my body at all this morning.
It was strength.
