9/6/10
Today I got baptized. I don’t think I ever imagined myself getting baptized. But things change and today I was ready to be baptized. So many things had led me to this moment, I mean really so many, many things big and small. You could almost say my entire life had led me to today. I wanted to shed off so many things and I had so many things to shed off because of the circumstances that occurred in my life, because of relationships in my life, because of events out of and in control in my life, so yeah I guess you could say my entire life led me to this one moment of being dunked in a freezing lake by two men I have only known for about a month and half. The whole idea of baptism used to seem really strange and meaningless to me, somebody just dunks you in water? What the hell is that supposed to do for you? How could that change your life? But it did. And it meant a hell of a lot. I feel like a different person everyday and I feel completely different then I did two months ago. Two months ago I was an empty shell, clinging to anything or anyone that would define me and therefore make me happy. Now I am still a shell but I am starting to be filled with a lot of things, things that define me, things that give me an identity, things that are personal and things that are mine and mine alone. Things that fill me up so much that I no longer need anything. Baptism signifies a new life, signifies being washed clean of everything you want to be washed clean of and living a new life that is defined by something that can’t exactly be defined ever, something endless, something infinite. My life is no longer meaningless, it is now marked and it was publicly marked. As I was lowered into this dirty lake water something besides the freezing temperature took my breath away, I won’t ever be able to define it. Something pretty magical and freeing and good happened. And I had no problem trusting the hands securely around me that they would bring me up to the surface again, they wouldn’t drop me and they wouldn’t let me stay under the water until I felt like I would drown, they would hold me and bring me back to light, to oxygen, they would give me breath again. And those hands are big, in fact they can hold me and everyone else in the universe all at the same time. The best part about God is that he is everything that is good; think about all of the good things in your life, just all of the things that have ever given you that feeling of being so happy and satisfied that you feel like you are glowing and then think of those things combining with those things, those personal things for all people everywhere. All those good things combining and magnifying to form the ultimate satisfied happy feeling, that feeling of just wanting to give and give and just live in that one moment of good feeling. That is what God is and what He wants to give us at the same time. He is love. He’s loving yes, and he does a lot of loving things but the bible says God is love. Think about that one. That’s what I want to give my life to and that’s what I did today through baptism. It was personal and public at the same time, which is a interesting concept to me, the idea of something being personal and public and you yourself being okay with that. But we live our lives in public, the world is public, and you can either have something personal in the midst of that or you can just morph into the public.
