A Baptism Story

My story growing up wasn’t particularly religious. I went to church briefly as a kid once my family created a relationship with a pastor through my mom’s profession. She sold a house to a kind, old, gentle pastor named Derry who began a journey with us our family attending a church briefly for a few years. As we went to church, my curiosity was peaked from communion and Sunday school and shortly I had professed that I wanted to get baptized.

As a kid, I had a keen awareness of being left out during the communion time at church and I didn’t want to be on the “outside”. It feels like my entire life up until a certain point was avoiding being on the outside of anything.

I also wanted to avoid hell, and I wanted to be safe and secure in the afterlife. Once I mentioned that I wanted to get baptized to join the communion club, the gentle older pastor visited me at our house and gave me a packet of papers about repentance. I was seven. He explained that repentance is going one way and then completely turning another. I said yes to everything he asked of me. I wanted to join the club and gain my afterlife security.

On baptism Sunday at the church, I remember the pastor walking down the aisle to where I was and asking me if I wanted to get baptized in front of the whole church. I said no as quietly and quickly as I could. Of course, he did not mention to the whole church what he asked me, nor what I said to avoid my further embarrassment. He kindly smiled at me and dismissed the congregation. He baptized me after the service while my parents and brother were present. And that, was that. I got to take communion… and I felt like maybe I was not going to hell.

The kind old pastor didn’t stay in Roanoke very long though, he soon moved to Georgia, and with his absence came our own family’s absence from church. We never really faithfully returned to church as a family after that.

I went about my life, considering myself kind of safe eternally? But I also never really felt safe. Something felt like it was missing, though I did want to be good. I wanted to know God. I wasn’t sure that my praying a prayer and quick dunk under water really meant anything in terms of after-life security - just incase anytime I saw someone ask you to “pray the prayer”, I did it again… juuuuuust incase.

As I got older and made ethical choices that were not in line with what christians did, I felt even more confused. There was no one telling me actively I should or shouldn’t do anything. And I didn’t know many friends who were devout or practicing christians. I knew that God probably loved me, but I also felt so empty, alone and lost. I craved depth in meaning, but I also had undiagnosed social anxiety and no motivation to try to attend church on my own. The bible that I owned sat on my shelf because every time I ever opened it… it felt so condemning or confusing to me. I was lost, but still put myself in the christian category.

In high school, some lovely friends invited me to a youth group and I returned to practicing “my religion” as a christian. I definitely felt like an outsider. They listened to music that I’d never heard before. My home was full of radio music of the 2000s, 80s hair bands, or my “emo” music of the day. I didn’t know worship music, I certainly didn’t know hymns, I felt as though I entered into a culture that was so different from me I didn’t really know what to say or how to participate. I was mostly a bystander, witnessing from afar, taking it in and trying to make sense of my surroundings.

Then, came my senior year. I had been attending the youth group on and off. In the winter, the youth group would take a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee where they would attend a conference together, stay at a hotel and have a lot of fun in the town exploring. I had been one year before and knew what I was getting into. The worship was less foreign, the experience was more welcome. As I sat in my chair on the last evening and the sermon was spoken over me - the speaker asked a question to us all - “what is the one thing that is keeping you from following Jesus fully right now?”

I knew what it was. It popped into my head immediately.

I had been dating someone for almost two years at that point. The relationship wasn’t great. I was insecure, and he was, well, not insecure. There was a lot of tension there, but I felt so desperately attached to him that I knew I would never have the emotional strength to part from him because of a religious notion. I didn’t have a lot of stability in my life, but he felt stable, and our relationship was for while it was. But it also wasn’t very christian. Really nothing about it at all was christian, and I knew I couldn’t genuinely follow God and continue to date him.

So I prayed a prayer that I would spend two years regretting. I told God that if He really wanted me to follow Him, he’d have to end my relationship.

And two weeks later, I found myself broken up with.

But the brokenness from that was profound. Too profound. I honestly can’t explain the devastation that began to wreck my life at that point. I didn’t know how to cope once it was over, and I CERTAINLY wasn’t going to run to God. The small group that I had just gained the confidence to go to tried to be there for me. They sent me grief cards. They reached out, but I was just so done. I wanted nothing but to get the boyfriend back, or to show him that I was worthy of having.

It was a worthless pursuit.

I spent the next year in that zone, just trying to prove myself. Trying to be “fun” enough. Trying the things that I swore I wouldn’t. I began to drink. I began to flirt with boys that I shouldn’t have. I went to parties. I stayed up late. I didn’t really eat much. I was looking for attention. I went to beach week. I made new friends. I finished out high school, but barely was a shadow of my former self. I was ready to be the girl that would have kept the boyfriend.

In the fall of 2008, I began my freshman year at Virginia Tech. I didn’t have a major, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, all I knew was that this was the next step. College is what you do after you graduate, and so, I went. I only knew one single person at the college that was my actual friend from theater in high school, her name is Christie.

I made friends with my roommate and a couple of girls on my hall as well. I spent my time waffling back and forth from spending time with my friends on my hall and their friends and going out or staying in, and accepting my friend Christie’s invitation to join her at some events at the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries).

The novelty of going out in a college setting was fun for me. Alcohol felt like it helped me release inhibitions of my lifelong social anxiety. I remember one time at a party a few high school girls recognizing my face and being surprised at my presence there and that I was “having a good time”. I wasn’t exactly known or even popular among my peers in high school, I just kind of existed.

I also accepted Christie’s invitation to BCM two nights a week: one was a worship event and the other a bible study. The bible study was not joined on purpose. I would have never put myself in a position where I knew nothing and had nothing to contribute on purpose, but I was shuffled into a group as the worship night ended and I gave my email and number to some students who pursued me and asked if I would come. I agreed.

I didn’t speak a word in bible study the entire semester, and into the next as well. Perhaps it wasn’t until our last meeting that I said anything at all, but I was certainly taking it in. I was listening every bible study and paying attention to what everyone was saying. I had no concepts of how to understand the Holy Spirit in Acts. Half of the time I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea that I was learning really until a couple of years later.

In the spring of 2009, there was a speaker who came to BCM to share and offer a challenge for Lent. To this day, I have no idea who the speaker was, but he asked us if we had ever considered our faith as a relationship with God. I had no idea what that meant. I only knew about the praying a prayer and having salvation in heaven when I died. Relationship and love and Jesus didn’t belong in the same sentence in my mind, those were all very different from one another.

He challenged us to consider that question for 40 days of lent while adding or subtracting something to help us focus. So, I did. I decided to finally just journal and write it all out there. I decided to finally confess, to put it on paper (or screen) that I was drinking, pursuing boys, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, still aching over a breakup and just all in all, a mess. I confessed all of it to the Lord, and I asked Him to take what I had, and show me what it mean to have a relationship with Him.

I set aside a time between my classes to write and confess, and to read the Bible. I read Jeremiah, because I loved the verse Jeremiah 29:11-13 and I wanted to understand where it came from. I watched the movie “Fireproof” which is really about marriage, but taught me what pursuit looked like as the husband in the movie pursued his wife. I began to reflect on God’s pursuit in my life, that He had always been there, always finding ways to connect me with the people of God even when I was far from him. From my neighbors growing up, to friends in high school and youth group to ultimately my college friend who brought me to the BCM.

That semester, my life changed.

I wanted to be different. I wanted to change. I wanted Jesus. I fell in love with who He is. I felt beloved by Him as the God who had pursued me since I was ever aware of the world though my family wasn’t very serious about churchgoing. I began to taste and see on my own. I found that there is actually good christian music during this time. I made more efforts to be in community with other BCM people. I continued going to BCM while my other friends chose not to continue. I made new connections.

It wasn’t instant. My life didn’t change instantly. But I did taste, and I did see. My heart changed during this time.

I once read an analogy about the christian faith and how when your life transforms, it’s like going to a new house. You left your old house, and you move into a new one. That’s your new residence, where you live. The old one has memories, but it’s not where you live anymore. Though, you may find yourself accidentally driving to the old house, even knocking on the door or wandering around it - it doesn’t mean that you live there anymore. Once you realize you’re at the old house and your furniture has all moved, you just hop in your car and go back to your new house.

That’s what it felt like for the next year. I began to shed the old house. Sometimes I drove back to it and paid it a visit, but I learned not to stay there.

It probably wasn’t until winter in 2009 that I felt like I had fully moved and felt like a new person.

And it wasn’t until later on in college that I even realized what had happened to me. I realized that I did not really follow Jesus before college in the sense of surrendering my life and letting Him in and having a relationship with me. I had an idea that He might be real, and that He would play a roll in ultimately my death. I ultimately treated Jesus until college as my insurance policy.

However, in that season I learned that God is a relational God, and that He has always been relational. He was named as the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. He was known by his relationship with his people. And He has always been in the business of relationship. We were created to be in relationship with Him. We weren’t just peons who were supposed to pray a prayer and then live a moral life. God is so much more intimate than that. He called me into relationship with Him, and in those college days I began the process of truly surrendering my life to God. Truly letting go. Letting go of sin, letting go of the plan for my life, letting go of the pain of breakups and friendships lost, and trusting Him. The song by Francesca Batistelli came out at that point in my life and it began my anthem.

My conversion experience from insurance policy to follower was only the beginning of my new life. The new life since I’ve walked with Him has been full of adventure, theological adventure, missional formation, prayer ups and downs, relationships changing and it goes on and on and on. Every day, every week, month and year is a new adventure. He’s always leading me through something new, healing something, redeeming something and inviting me deeper into the kingdom life that He ushered in.

In college, I was nervous to be “re-baptized”, because I was so afraid to renounce or belittle something that had happened to me when I was a kid. That time as a 7-year-old when God did start to pursue me was still important to me. I was afraid if I was re-baptized, that part of my story would mean nothing. I was also theologically afraid that I would be offending God.

God began to stir in my life to consider being baptized again seriously when we worked at Virginia Tech as associate staff. In one sense, I knew that my life change and surrender to Jesus and my choice to truly follow Him was in college. However, I thought it was ludicrous to consider being baptized as a campus minister. I assumed people cared about my credibility in terms of being baptized long ago and having some sort of spiritual knowledge and backstory. I assumed those who were under my ministerial care would think I was a fraud, or think I was wrong or crazy not to get baptized in college. I assumed that it would “look bad” for me to get baptized 8 years after following Jesus. It felt awkward. I was also in the process of having babies and just couldn’t muster up the energy to think about it further.

The thought left my mind as we entered into a season of losing Scott’s parents, having babies who didn’t sleep, enduring a pandemic, mental health challenges and ultimately moving for the third time in our marriage.

One night, when I was putting Lyla to bed, I was laying on the mat beside her crib quietly and urging her to sleep when I just felt a sudden nudge toward baptism again. I was minding my own business, not concerned at all about baptism when the prompting came. I engaged the thought a bit in my mind, asking God if this was something that was from Him. The next thing I felt was a jolt in my head. I cannot explain what it was because I have never felt it again. It was so clear and so obvious. However, my old problems lingered, and I didn’t know how I would carry this out.

Soon after, Scott shared with me a friend from past ODU ministry days who had been re-baptized as an adult for very similar reasons as me with his family in his own home country across the globe from the United States. Reading his story and seeing his photos gave me the confidence I needed to move forward, but it was still a couple more years until I would actually make a plan.

I honestly didn’t want to be baptized at my church in Harrisonburg, because I felt like I wanted it both to be low key and private, I wanted Scott to be able to do it and I wanted the location to be meaningful. I also wanted to share it with everyone. I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to share it with the people who saw the transformation in college. I wanted to share it with my students from CNU, ODU, VT and JMU. I wanted to share it with my church families from Norfolk, Blacksburg and Harrisonburg. I didn’t want to keep the experience to only one of my church bodies, but instead, I wanted to share it with all of you.

So I talked to Scott, I asked him what his thoughts were and we ultimately decided that he would baptize me in the ocean while we visited Hawaii on our sabbatical this past summer. Hawaii held meaning for us because it’s where we spent our honeymoon before we launched into this ministry career that we’ve walked in for the past 11 years. It also held special meaning because our friends in Harrisonburg that I had talked this through with could also be there after they moved halfway around the globe from us.

Therefore, on July 11, 2024 on Mahaulepu Beach in Kauai, Hawaii after a little cave adventure and hike, Scott baptized me in front of our kids, our friends and their kids.

It both felt ordinary and magical. I’m thankful for the chance to share with the world that I have been buried with Christ in death, and that I have also been risen to new life with Him. We celebrated that evening in Kauai with Hawaiian Barbecue and Hawaiian Ice.

I’m thankful that God gave me the chance to proclaim before the world, family and friends that I have surrendered my life to Him and chosen to follow Him for the rest of my days. The walk with Christ since 2009 hasn’t always been easy. It’s been full of things I’ve had to take to the cross, let them be crucified and wait for God to give new life. It’s been full of grief, watching people die, making sense of why hard things happen and running to Him when nothing seems to make sense. But, not for a second has He ever left me. And I rejoice in giving my life over to Him.

Colossians 3:1-3:Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.