To Blog or Not to Blog, plus my RE-Baptism Story

I have been consciously toying with the idea of starting a blog for the past month.  It seems like the thing to do.  I constantly read blogs.  I find blogs I love about a lot of things, even things I don't particularly love.  Like this one blog I'm subscribed to "Home Sanctuary."  She gives great tips and ideas for keeping your house clean and well like a sanctuary, as the title implies.  I'm a terrible house keeper and I definitely don't love it. I try and try, but I rarely have a sparkling clean sanctuary-esque house.  Currently there are baby toys all over the floor of my living room while my 7 month old is exploring her new found freedom of sitting up and pulling herself up in her crib instead of taking a nap.  I don't even want to talk about the dishes in and around my sink. Lord help.  Anyways, I'm also subscribed to a marriage and sex blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum.  This one I enjoy much more with less accompanying guilt about the state of my unkempt house, and while I'm not going to comment on the state of my private life on my blog as much as the state of my cleaning habits, who doesn't like to read about sex?  To tone it down a bit, Sheila talks in her blog about the value of sex and intimacy within marriage.  She gives both wives and husbands tips on how to engage their spouses and if there are difficulties in your marriage, how to work on them or overcome them. It's great stuff and I'm always filing it away in my head to pull out someday when we may hit a bump in that part of the road.  I also find cooking blogs constantly while looking for recipes on Pinterest.  If you ever thought that the world needed another cooking blog, just get on Pinterest to prove yourself wrong. Then I found a website and blog about Early Childhood Language Development called Little Stories.  I'm hooked on that one now too.  The author, Kim Rowe, is a Speech Language Pathologist and writes about language development in a very easy to understand way.  She also actually returns emails, wow!  I emailed her a few days ago with a question and heard back from her the same day with a brief promise that she would get back to me and then a few days later with a detailed response to my email.  Last, but not least, my first blog type website love was The Pioneer Woman where Ree has a cooking section, a Home and Garden section, a photography section, and a day to day life/blog section.  It's the mother load of blogs.  

Needless to say, I didn't want to start a blog because I thought the world needed another.  While I very much enjoy cooking and my sweet husband swears I'm the best cook on the planet, I'm not going to blog every recipe that I make with step by step photos or video or whatever.  Heaven knows I don't have the answers to everything - or hardly anything for that matter.  That's when I realized why I wanted to start a blog.  Not because I have answers, but because I have questions.  Oh, and I have a really honest and straight forward opinion about almost everything. How exactly I'm going to figure out how to blog questions -- I'm not sure yet.  I also couldn't think of a creative blog title either (so input there would be great as well).  I just knew I wanted and needed to write.  I also very specifically knew that my first story on my blog would be about this past Sunday, May 6, 2012.  It goes something like this...

Sunday morning May 6, 2012 was a lot like most other Sunday mornings, well that's not exactly true, but I'll spare you the details.  After a late night on Saturday and an interrupted night of not much sleep due to nursing my baby, we made it to church almost on time and were sitting in the service. 

That day we were scheduled to have a baptism.  My church is a bit nontraditional in some ways and we don't have a baptismal in our building.  Instead we have a pool party in the parking lot.  Okay not literally, but kind of!  The church sets up a pool in the parking lot for baptism purposes.  We have lunch - hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken sandwiches and then watch the others be baptized.  

So on Sunday, the pastor decided to teach about baptism.  I grew up in church, accepted Christ as my Savior at 4 years old and was baptized at 5.  The concept wasn't new to me.  I believed what the pastor taught us and showed us it says in the Bible about baptism so you wouldn't think this would be a particularly life changing sermon for me. One thing that Pastor Mark asked us to do before he started teaching was to suspend all of our current beliefs about baptism, listen to the service, and let God speak to us about what we were supposed to do with the information.  So I did.  Everything was rocking along great, and honestly a bit boring, until Mark told a story out of Acts 19.  

In Acts 19, Paul comes across several men who had been baptized by John (the Baptist).  John had been preaching that the Messiah (Jesus) was coming and that you should repent of your sins and wait for him.  When Paul met these guys, they still hadn't heard that Jesus had come, died, was buried, rose again, and left the Holy Spirit for us.  Apparently, they had missed out on a lot!  Anyways, when these men heard the Good News, they accepted Christ and were baptized again as a symbol that there had been a change and they were re-aligning themselves with the Lord and his will for them.  Pastor Mark then made the point that these men didn't have to be re-baptized.  They chose to.  

It was then that the Lord convicted me to be re-baptized.  As I sat in my chair, I started to think maybe I should be baptized again.  I had been baptized at 5, a lot of things have changed in the past 20 years of my life. Specifically, the death of my mom when I was 18.  The past 7 years since her death, the Lord has walked with me, challenged me, and ultimately healed me.  Especially in the past year I have experienced a great amount of healing and a calling by the Lord to become a great woman of God like my mother was.  My mom left a legacy of love and faith in Jesus for my family.  We know, without a doubt, what she believed and who she was in Christ.  I want to live the same way for my family.  To have a relationship with my Lord that inspires my children, my husband, and others in my life. It was an emotional conviction.  As I sat in my chair, I teared up a little. (With all these references to crying, you would think that I cry all the time but I really don't. It was an a-typical day for me to say the least.)

So I thought, the next time we have a baptism at the church, I'll sign up.  It will give me plenty of time to think about it and prepare.  Then the pastor turned it up and notch.  He made an open invitation to the baptism that afternoon and challenged that if there was anyone there who wanted to be baptized today, even in their t-shirt and jeans, to come on.  In my case, I was wearing baby pink short and a white shirt - how un-water friendly could I get?  So there I was, already being convicted and the Lord was saying no, not later - do it now, right now.  I thought of at least 20 reasons why I shouldn't while I sat in my chair and the worship band closed the service.  I even resisted, I wanted to push the small voice inside me away.  I was emotional and crying as I tried to sing the songs at the end of the service. (I started to wonder what was wrong with me? All the crying and such. Geez. Could I possibly be pregnant again?)  Then I stopped resisting and listened to my Jesus calling me.  I can count on one hand the number of times the Lord has called me so clearly.  How dare I even think of ignoring him now?  When the service was over, I told my wonderful husband that I had decided that I wanted to get baptized and could he please rush home and get me some different clothes. 


After briefly speaking to the pastor and filling out a card with some basic information and the story behind my baptism that day, my step daughter, baby, and I headed outside to grab a quick bite to eat while dear husband ran home to get us both clothes.  The pastor, who also married us and has been friends with my husband for several years, suggested that my husband should help baptize me.  Which, I think, was one of the sweetest parts of the whole thing.  I was emotional (again!?!) as they read out the short story behind my decision.  I could tell, without looking, that my husband was tearing up beside me.  When I came out of the water, he was there.  What an awesome thing.  I won't go into all the amazing reason why I love him, but I know there is no one else I wanted to come out of that water and see. What an incredible experience.  I literally feel like I have been cleansed.  I know though, that it was very little to do with being dunked in a pool on Sunday and a whole lot to do with my Savior, Jesus, who can wash all my sins away.

 Here I am almost crying.

And these are my favorite pictures after the "dunk."

Goodness, I love that handsome man. =)