Baptism + Testimony
“I have to ask, have you been baptized?”
My pastor asked me this during a meeting for membership at my new church. We had just moved to Arizona, we knew exactly what church we wanted to go to and we were eager to get plugged in and started.
The question threw me off. During my membership application I had to write out my testimony. As I started to figure out how to write exactly how I began to follow Jesus, I found myself focused on the past four years. I started with how my husband left me while pregnant with my youngest son. I started at the hardest part.
If you’ve read any of my other posts about my faith or what I’ve been sharing of my story lately, you might have picked up on some of the pieces I was dropping. 2020 was rough and I think there were a lot of divorces that came out of that time. At least, according to a podcast I listened to where they shared that they heard from a lot of listeners about upcoming divorces that came to light because of the lockdown. When I heard this at the time, I felt confident, safe, and secure in my own marriage and my own relationship. My husband was my best friend, there was no way we were about to find out we couldn’t stand each other.
Well, however many months later, that is exactly what happened. He left. He never told me that he couldn’t stand me. He never even gave a reason. It was just, “I don’t want this anymore.” Peace out girl scout.
That was the moment where I learned that you cannot control a single thing.
This is where I started my testimony. This is where I word-vomited (via a novel length testimony on an application) the past four years and how I only survived because of God and His grace. In retrospect, I might need to apologize to my pastor. I might have been over sharing.
I learned that I couldn’t control a single thing but that didn’t stop me from trying. However, no matter what I did, it never worked out. I couldn’t use logic. I couldn’t be perfect. I couldn’t do anything. My life was in shambles and I had zero idea how I was going to move forward.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.
I spent most of my life fighting battles. I have spent more years than not fighting to survive, be okay, and not have the fires of my childhood follow me. I was an adult now, I was close to thirty! There was no way that this was the plot twist of my life.
Until I woke up the next day and was living it. I was living the plot twist that wasn’t supposed to happen.
It was here that I finally learned what looking up and finding God was like. I was saved at seven and had even spent the eight years leading up to this moment in church. I thought I knew God. I thought I was following God. I thought I was being guided and directed by God. I had even been baptized before my oldest son was born! I knew God, okay?!
Turns out, I didn’t. Well, maybe I did. However, I was blocking my relationship with God by creating idols of identity. (That is what I am going to call it) I was married, so anything negative that was ever said about me by my family was obviously a lie. My marriage was an idol. I found large portions of my identity in my marriage. I was the yes girl. You needed something done? I got your back! I wanted to be the person helping instead of being the person who needed help so desperately that I said yes to everything, burned myself out in the process, and never let go of anything. I just found ways to sleep less, chug caffeine more, and manipulate time so that it seemed like I could keep saying yes. This was another idol of identity. Other portions of my identity was wrapped in the fact that I was needed. If I was needed, maybe then I wouldn’t be replaceable or forgettable. I was wrapped up in being a writer. I started publishing and found myself in a crazy publishing timeline and committed to it because I am a writer and if I don’t write this book, well then, I’m not a writer. I have to have something to show for all the talk I speak about being a writer. I was a mom and that should have taken up more parts of my identity. However, because I thought “mom” had the same taste as some four letter words, I set out to prove that being a mom doesn’t change you drastically. I set out to prove that you can be a mom and do whatever else you wanted to do. If you had good time management, you could do anything.
When I look back on those times and those years, I see good and I see how I was blessed, despite the idols I clutched to as a security blanket. Yet, I also see how they point to a girl who was trying to fit a mold of what she thought a Christian girl looked like. That girl, the idol clutching girl, was so full of intelligence of God but no wisdom of God.
In short: it was all in my head and none of it was in my heart.
It was in 2020, when my husband left and I was sitting in the remains of crushed idols that didn’t solve my problems that I learned that I needed to let go. My power, my control was non-existent. It wasn’t there. I had no power. I had no control. That was a lie the world had told me and I somehow figured out a way to put some Christian-ese on it.
That’s when I finally gave my life over to Christ. Depsite the years of thinking I was letting go and letting God, I wasn’t. I was still holding onto things very, very tightly. I had to unclench my fist. I had to let go. I had to trust that God was going to repair the brokenness and lead me in whatever was next.
Matthew 6:34 has always been my favorite verse. Perhaps it was because it was something I aspired to but never knew how to live it out.
So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (NASB)
It was in the broken mess of my life that I learned how to live this out. It was literally all I could do. I couldn’t think about tomorrow, or the next day. I couldn’t think about next week. I couldn’t think about next month or even when my unborn baby (at the time) was coming. I was focused on the day in front of me and I was going to let everything else figure itself out later. It was literally all I could do. It was all I could handle.
Back to the office with my pastor, present day, I stammered a little bit. Yes, I had been baptized before but— I already kind of saw where he was going with his question. Did I need to be baptized again? The thoughts were already racing in my mind: isn’t that attention seeking? Does it matter? Do I need to be baptized because I had already done it years ago? Like, it wasn’t a true converation but it was still a public declaration of following Christ, wasn’t it?
My pastor pointed out how baptism comes after true conversion. In the Bible, we see story after story of when people believed in Christ and then left to be baptized. We also saw people being baptized by John when John was telling everybody to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 3:2) The people were repenting. They were turning away from their old self. They were changing their mind. They were choosing Christ.
In 2020, that is what I finally did. I repented. I turned away from everything that got me to that terrible point in 2020 where my identity was wrapped up in things that were fleeting. I finally chose Christ.
So, in that meeting with my pastor, I decided to be baptized and publicly declare that I am following Jesus, for real this time. (My baptism happened a few weeks ago!)
Since 2020, God has moved in my life, growing and sanctifying me. My marriage has been restored (although, both of us went through our own growing processes), my family is doing better than they were before. Things are so different and good but not because it is all working out or because I am behind the scenes controlling everything. It is good because God is at the center of all of this and we are following His lead.