I loved going to church, largely because I was going with my grandma, who loved going to church. The services were very traditional, and I learned them quickly, able to recite the various parts alongside the congregation before too long, without needing to use the hymnal for reference much of the time. I attended confirmation classes in that same church, was confirmed, choosing Proverbs 3:5 as my life verse, and took communion for the first time in that church. I can still picture the red carpet, warm wooden pews, and countless stained glass windows that surrounded us. My senior year of high school, we had our baccalaureate service in my church. I helped teach Sunday school and vacation Bible school there. I felt so at home.
Even now, as an adult, when I attend a Lutheran church, I can pull the traditions out from my memory and integrate myself seamlessly amongst those who regularly attend.
Halfway through college, I discovered new churches, and began to attend them. At first, they seemed a little “out there,” with contemporary worship songs instead of traditional hymns, following different layouts for the service. Communion was more open to everyone, and often less traditional in how it was taken. There was much less repeating creeds, call and responses, and the sermons were more vivid to me. I stopped taking sermon notes, as I had learned growing up, and started to really just listen and remember the messages. I started laughing in church. I started to love the music, raise my hands, and sway along with the beat.
I found myself focused much less on what was coming next and much more on the experience as a whole. I grew up knowing God loved me, Jesus loved me, and Holy Spirit loved me. I grew up afraid of messing up and going to hell. I grew up reciting memorized prayers.
My former husband and I were married in a contemporary church, with contemporary services, although our wedding ceremony was still traditional in most ways. After a few years, we moved to South Dakota, and started attending new churches all over again. We found one we fell in love with, the pastor, the programming, the children’s ministry, the worship, the Bible studies, the community. For the first time since my childhood in my hometown ELCA church, I felt this church was home.
By this time, I began feeling differently about tradition and was working on letting go of the “rules” I felt religion called to me, and more on trying to just feel, hear, or sense what God was calling. At first, when our oldest son was born, I was unsure of dedicating him instead of baptizing him in infancy like I grew up knowing we were supposed to do, but after prayerful consideration, I really believed that’s what was right for our family. Along with our dearest married friends who had also recently had a baby boy, we dedicated our sons in that new home church.
After a couple of years, my marriage started on it’s beginning toward the end, and we sadly went to church less and less. Our second two children never were dedicated, and for years after my former husband was gone, I felt such guilt about this. I knew in my heart it wasn’t a “necessity” and if they grew up believing and trying to know God, whether or not they were dedicated as babies was not going to keep them from a life of salvation. The enemy tried hard to dissuade me of that for many, many months.
By June of 2015, my marriage was basically over and my children and my world was crashing down around us. We no longer attended that church, were living in transitional housing as I worked a new job after being a stay-at-home-mom, with my former husband more a figment of our imagination than a person that was actually around. I began attending a Lutheran church that was close to where we were living at the time, because I could walk there. I attended only a few times, and felt so out of place.
At my new job, however, I was placed in a room at a church daycare, with mobile infants and a couple other staff, one of which became my confidante, one of my best friends, and a beacon of hope and shining light of Jesus love. Eventually, she convinced me to come to a Sunday service at the church where our daycare located. I confided in her that I was anxious about it, not sure I would fit in, worried what it would look like to be a single mom with three little children, and hated the idea of sitting alone. She invited me to sit beside her and her family, right there in the second row. I put on my brave, and I attended the church.
I was completely surprised by how welcome I felt. The children’s pastor welcomed me and my children with open arms and a heart full of joy. Over the years, she has become another one of my closest friends, even though she has moved on from that pastoral role. The congregation welcomed us as well. There were so many kind, caring people who began to love on me and my littles, and we never stopped going. That church is still our home.
Soon after we attended, there was a baptism service. At this church, as well as the one before, children could be dedicated, but you choose when and if you want to be baptized. I recall, so clearly, watching, cheering, and worshipping as baptisms happened up in front, and in an instant, I had this thought.. “What if some day all three of my children were baptized, and I was re-baptized, and we did it together?”
I could almost envision it in my mind.
That thought never left. Over the years, we witnessed many baptisms. The children would often watch, and they would cheer alongside us all as people re-surrendered, re-professed, and publicly invited us all to be a part of the joy as they celebrated their re-birth by water baptism. Each time, I would think, “what if…”
Occasionally, throughout the years, I would ask my children if they were interested in or ready to be baptized. Each time, they would say no, for various reasons. I would not push it, because I knew in my heart it would happen when they were ready for it to happen.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago this year, 2023. My daughter, the youngest child, watched baptisms happening at church and told me she might be ready next time it happened, but she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to do it on her own. Immediately, I went back to my vision, though I did not tell her that. I simply said that perhaps, by the time they happened next, someone else in our family would want to be baptized too. I prayed it would happen, and we let the idea rest quietly.
My oldest son woke up one morning, a month or two later, and after I sang the “good morning, I love you” little song I sing each day, he asked me, before any other words came out of his mouth, “Mom, when is baptism happening again?” I was so shocked that I was not sure I heard him correctly, and asked him o repeat the question. It was the same thing. I asked why, and he said, “I think Jesus wants me to be baptized.” I found out later that it was because he had a dream he was with Jesus, and Jesus lead him to be baptized in it.
That same day I went and found the children’s pastor and we figured out when the next baptism Sunday would be. I shared the news with my son, and he did not say much more about it. During the end of the school year, he began attending a youth group at my friends’ church instead of our own, and started becoming more invested and open in his faith. One day, the second week, he asked me for his own adult Bible. He attended a youth-group summer camp with that youth group, and about a month later, a youth-group retreat with our own. The retreat was the week before baptisms were to be happening at our church, and I had not heard much about it again, and was hesitant to ask and make him feel coerced, but I found out he told the children’s pastor at our home church that he was still going to be baptized. I was elated for him.
The week prior to the youth-retreat that lead into baptism Sunday, I began asking my second son, the middle child, about the possibility that he might want to be baptized, too. He was largely not committed to an answer, and would sway back and forth between a yes and a no depending on the breeze or his mood. He told me he would think about it, seriously, and asked multiple times about the temperature of the water. Once he heard from the children’s pastor that the water was warm, he told me he was ready to be baptized.
Just like that, it seemed, after 8 years of holding onto this vision, all three of my children were planning to be baptized on the same Sunday.
I was ready, too.
I know that to many, it may seem strange that I would choose to be baptized again as an adult, considering the fact that I was baptized as a young toddler back in my first home church. Even I was battling that thought for a moment or two.
I wanted to lead by example, on one hand, and on another, I wanted to stand alongside my children and proclaim to everyone that Jesus is MY Lord, Savior, Father, Friend, and Brother. I wanted to make a public declaration that I believe in His life, and how he gave His for my own, so that I would not go to Hell because of my birth into a fallen world, like I was afraid of growing up. He makes us new and washes away our sins, and it was time to declare all of those things for myself, of my own choosing.
On Sunday, July 30, 2023, in the middle of worship, all dressed in t-shirts that read “You are a treasure,” my children and I were water baptized in our home church, surrounded by our church family that has prayed for, over, and with us, for most of my children’s lives. They have supported us in so many known and unknown ways, and loved us during our worst times.
It was a perfect morning.
I entered the water first, guiding my daughter to join me. She declared that she loved Jesus, and because of her faith, I was able to baptize her in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The joy in her face as she rose out of the water was indescribable and she giggled quietly as I hugged her so tight.
My middle son was next, as he had asked me to baptize him too. I was unsure what reason he would give for deciding to be baptized, because the entire week leading up to it, he was not really able to form an answer if I asked. When given the opportunity to speak, however, he told, with beautiful language, how he knows Jesus loves him for who he is and he is under God’s wing (in his own words, which are recorded on the church Livestream for revisiting). I baptized him the same, and he rose with one of the largest, most genuine grins I had seen on his face in years, and we embraced before he left the water.
Next, our Lead Pastor joined me, and after we joked about me baptizing him, he asked me why I was choosing baptism that day. I told a brief account of my vision 8 years ago and how every one of my children had decided, individually, to be baptized, just like the idea I had, and this was fulfilling that vision. Pastor Brent, the first lead pastor I have met who really sees me for me, loves me for who I am, me, Nicole, as a person, was who I knew I wanted to take this step with me. Our pastor, who is a brother to us as well, is legally blind, but really, truly, has been the first lead pastor to see me as a sister in Christ.
The actual submersion of the baptism felt like it was happening in slow motion. I felt the water as it rushed from my torso up over my head, warm, light, comforting, and freeing, and as I rose, it all fell away with utter weightlessness and I was immediately filled with joy. I immediately knew that this was a prophecy that he had spoken to me, over the life of my family, being fulfilled, and I had not thought of it that way prior to that moment. I felt strong, confident, and peaceful, all at the same time. And as I peered out into the congregation, I saw, even without my glasses, the smiling, cheering faces, of so many who had been there while awaiting the prophecy to be fulfilled. I turned to Brent and hugged him so tight, and then made a way for my oldest son.
My son has become such a brave young man over the years. Once, he was so anxious about things that he would hide in the back and sometimes cry. He did not want people watching him. But this day, he walked with pure confidence and determination, and entered the water ready. I could sense it. He spoke of how God came to him in a dream, calling him to be baptized. He too had Pastor Brent baptize him. He is blessed to have an amazing, honest connection with our children’s pastor too, who has watched him grow up for many years now, and had deliberated between both of those amazing male role models to baptize him. When he rose from the water, I saw the most brilliant grin on his face, and he came, arms wide open, to embrace me. As we did, Brent cheered him on from behind, with the church family joining in their seats. The hug was electric. It was a perfect moment.
It was a perfect family baptism.
I have watched and re-watched the baptism and looked at the photos I have multiple times over the last week. I can play the experience back in my mind so effortlessly. I pray I never lose that ability. I have cried beautiful tears over it all, and been amazed by how steady God has been through our lives as we all aligned to that day. He is so, so good.
(Thank you to my friend Jolynn of Beloveds Design Photography for capturing baptism photos, including the one I share publicly here.)
Disclaimer: Nothing I have expressed here is meant to condemn or ridicule the Lutheran Church (or any other traditional ones). For me, personally, the church I was raised in was becoming more tradition and repetition and feeding my soul less, and I needed a change. Contemporary church is where I found myself at home again. I still have love and fondness for my roots!)
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