To Love God & Be Loved By God: my baptism

The first four months were a valley.

The second four months were a mountain.

For four months, my cup was empty.

For four months, it overflowed.

It's not like the first four months were horrible. Trust me, I'm naively optimistic so much so that you could set me in a literal fire, and it would still take me four months to notice. I was forced to choose every day - will I die to myself or will these ideals waver? Can I really spend so much time encouraging, loving, and serving with a smile on my face, when no one is around to encourage, love, or serve me? And I guess the answer is yes, but it wasn't easy. (And it's not like I never failed.) But those first four months were refinement, pruning. Pruning away not the bad, but the unnecessary. Leaving me with nothing for myself except Jesus. (And that's how I was forced to test the idea that Jesus is my best friend. He is, but that wasn't easy either.)

But the second four months were water. Being refined and grown through joy and love instead of loneliness and hardship (again, I didn't even recognize it as hardship at the time.) God's love rained down on me. Ample time to know Jesus better. Beautiful children to sing and dance and love and laugh with. Every day a perfect day. Every day the best day of my life.

And both of these seasons were... short. It's always short, isn't it? But doesn't each once seem a lifetime when we're living it?

Yet, I come out of these two short seasons a completely different person. I was emptied out and filled back up again. And here I am. I'm so excited for everything that is coming in the next couple months. I will run all around America and then end up in Amsterdam.

These 8 months were a baptism, a death and a rebirth deeper than the ones I had previously known.

When I joined my church - Greenhill UMC - I was asked if I had been baptized already. I said that I thought I had been because my mom had told me that my grandmother had baptized me as a child. They said that people don't usually get rebaptized unless they just really want to. At the time, I felt super awkward about it. I had never even seen someone get baptized. I didn't really see the point of it, so I said no. Then, when I was in college, I saw a lot of people get baptized at one point or another, and I sat in a lot of discussions at school about whether baptism was necessary for salvation. I knew many people that thought it was, but I felt strongly that my relationship with God was more important than whether or not I had been baptized. I didn't want to get baptized just to cover all my bases for Heaven. I also felt awkward because I wasn't particularly making a special decision for Jesus at that time; I had already known Him, loved Him, and served Him.

Then I felt like God was telling me I would be baptized in Haiti. And honestly, that sounded awkward to me too. I told God that He had to work out the details if that was really what He wanted.

And then I forgot about it, completely. Without class discussions to make me feel like somehow less for not being baptized (or at least not remembering my baptism), it was hardly ever on my mind!

And then, for my last Sunday here, I was invited to the baptism of a friend. And suddenly, I knew, and I was so excited! I hadn't even spared it a thought, and God worked out all the details behind my back. I asked if I could be baptized too. Basically everyone I know here was there to celebrate Jesus with me, and it was absolutely fantastic!