I'm getting baptized!! Decided that Tuesday morning when I finally asked myself why I was putting everything off. The rest will explain :) I'll be reading [some of] this at my baptism. (Not all of it, because I think that would take a year...)
"Of this I'm sure, the past don't own us anymore."
I grew up in the church, surrounded by a loving family of believers that was reflected at home. From a young age, I can remember the church being a second home to me and absolutely loving the people there. My younger sister and I prayed with my mom or dad every night, and I still remember how we always started: "Dear God, thank you for this day, thank you for all we have, and please be with those who are less fortunate than us," followed by whatever else we wanted to tell or ask Him that night. Other than that, my elementary school and middle school years never reflected my beliefs, other than feeling I needed to be a "good Christian girl" who followed the rules and always did her best.
Doing my best turned into a feeling that I had to be the best, a performance-driven attitude that has plagued my academic, social, and spiritual lives since then and still does. I didn't only need to succeed, I needed to do it perfectly and better than everyone else. And if I didn't, I was hard on myself.
But, I think in high school I finally started to understand what following God was all about. I remember a period throughout my junior/senior years where I was reading the Bible, praying, and journaling every night. I was asking God to change me, and He was incredibly faithful. I saw my thought life changing, my priorities shifting, and I had quite literally never felt so refreshed and happy in my life. But then it was gone. My best guess is that, on the inside, I was terrified about where these changes were taking me, and I decided to back out. This happened over and over up until this point, and afterwards for years. On again, off again was my relationship with God and every time I fell away I felt more and more ashamed. My thoughts were, why can't I keep this up? Why do I keep falling away, being so fickle? And isn't God going to get tired of all this back and forth, and just give up on me? I mean, I would...
This thought pattern has followed me for years and as much as I knew in my mind that God would never give up on me, I was scared in my heart that I could mess up bad enough that He would just leave. During my summer at LT after my freshman year at OSU, things started to become clear. By thinking that maybe God could give up on me, and that I had to pull all the weight in my relationship with God to keep it from "going under," I was shown how much I did not know about God's character and how little I trusted Him. I remember giving over everything to Him after an immense amount of struggling and feeling my heart torn between my worldly desires and my need for God. But of course, coming back to campus revealed a stark contrast between how I'd hoped to live for God and how the world wanted me to live, at least while in college.
I've allowed my pride, performance-driven attitude, and skewed priorities to rule my life since then. I've continued to fight a battle between giving it all to God and knowing that could mean drastic changes to my life now and my future, and giving up on all that and just doing what's easy now, namely focusing on classes and the petty, selfish things that can make up much of our lives. The easy has mostly won, until this past summer made me see a little straighter.
This summer was an immense help to figuring out where I stand now. I was initially challenged with my own admission of "grades are the only thing I can't give over to God," prompted by Kathy Borsos' difficult questions I secretly had no interest in hearing. The community and strong support of faithful women in my summer small group made me question how I was living day to day, with little to no time with God. I was confronted with the realization that I was terrified of what a commitment to God could mean for my life, terrified enough to let it hold me back from what I knew my whole self was yearning for - a lifelong walk with Jesus.
As my mom would say, I've been stalling. I keep thinking that there is something there that is keeping me from God and His love, but I know it can't be Him: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus," Romans 8:38-39. I finally saw that what was standing between God and I...was me. Me and my fear. And suddenly I was done, done with being scared, done with running from the only one who loves me unconditionally and more than I could ever imagine. He must have uncovered my eyes to let me know this, because for so long I've been stuck.
I've spent most of my spiritual life letting fear rule, and I think it's finally time for faith to take it's place. I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, that He will never leave me or stop loving me, and guess what? He knows that I'm going to continually fall short of perfection and knew that long before He died for me on that cross. And you know what else? He would have loved me just the same if I'd never even acknowledged Him. If I hated Him. If I were to never believe. I think that's someone more than worth trusting, worth putting my faith in. I believe He has a better plan for my life, even if it flips everything I have upside down. And now, because He's brought me to a place where I don't have to be scared any more, I've decided to be baptized! I know that this isn't going to make my life any easier or any less of a struggle between worldly desires and spiritual ones, but I'll know that there is a wonderful being that I can always count on for help. It doesn't mean I'm not going to fail, it means I'm going to know that there's still grace and love and forgiveness for me when I fall short. It doesn't mean that I'm magically going to know what I'm doing after I graduate, but it means that I will serve Him in whatever I end up doing. It means I no longer have to be scared. And that is something to smile about. :)
Peace & Blessings
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