Immersion

This past Wednesday I witnessed a new friend who I sense will become a very dear friend get baptized. Yesterday I watched an iphone video of my brother in law getting baptized. It reminded me of what a married couple must feel like when they attend a wedding and witness the vows they once made being remade by two new hearts. Watching her stand there, folding one arm over her chest and preparing to hold her breath with her other hand as she joyously proclaimed love over her heart and life, Jesus as her guide and map, I did the same. I remade my vow as I remembered the dance that God and I once shared in the water together nine years ago.

As I continue the journey I look forward to another nine years (and then some) and end on this notion: baptism isn't a one-time occurrence. The action is, of course, but the intent is a choice we make every single day just as love and forgiveness are- Wednesday brought me this understanding. I haven't been intentional about that choice in my past but just as I did nine years ago, I choose today to follow my guide and my map, my God, for there is no other fount I know as I find myself standing on His promises again and again and again.

To be continued.

It was Illinois and it was summer. I heard my grandfather’s blue Chevy pull up in our driveway and the click of his door as he got out. Seconds later I was greeted with a pink stuffed bear holding a heart. Kissing my mom goodbye on the cheek, grandpa and I took off on our three hour journey to Perryville so I could spend time with he and my grandmother like we did each summer.

     As my grandpa and I crossed the Mississippi he insisted I hold my breath going over the bridge.
            “Train tracks are different”, he told me, “those you pick up your feet when ya cross em.”

At the halfway mark we always stopped at Dairy Queen or Hardee’s for an ice cream cone. My grandfather is a diabetic with the sweetest tooth I’ve ever known. A vanilla cone in both our hands, he continued driving and asked me silly things like ‘so, you got a boyfriend yet?’  To which I responded, “Grandpa, ew! Boys are mean.” He laughed and said that would change. I liked making him laugh.
           
             Once we arrived on North Street, grandpa drove past the house and made a U-ie in the Pete & Leo’s parking lot, then pulled onto the side of the road out front. I threw open the door before he could even put it into park as he called out after me. Up the stairs and through the screen door I entered the foyer where grandma had spent hours one fall stenciling ivy green leaves which grew up those off-white walls of hers. Through the foyer there was a second dining room covered in burnt orange carpet and beyond that was the kitchen where I’d always find her. She sat at a white linoleum table atop green legs, cigarette in hand and an alkaseltzer in front of her, The Bold and The Beautiful disputing who cheated on who in the background. My grandma.

            I bounded into the kitchen, stopping first in the doorway and reaching my hand into the cookie jar (it was never empty) then running over to her and gripping onto her. Her hug stuck as if I could feel her arms around me even after they weren’t anymore.

            “Oh my sweet girl! I missed you!”
            “I missed you too Gramma! So so much!”
            “I have something for you honey.” She took my tiny hand in her twice as large wrinkled one and walked me to the back porch. There was a chair waiting for me to sit in so I sat. Next she told me to close my eyes, so I did. I felt a box placed onto my legs. I opened my eyes and on my lap lay a face-painting kit. See, I was the kid at the fair who first and foremost had to have my face painted. Forget about the merry-go-round or the funnel cake. There was just something about having a rainbow or a heart or a horse, things that aren’t allowed to live on our cheeks in real life, take up residency there for a few hours.

            “So”, she says, “what would you like on your cheek today?”  I honestly don’t even remember what I asked for or what she painted because all I can remember is how I felt; happy, known, seen. This is the first memory I have of someone acknowledging an interest of mine, encouraging and investing in that interest.

           

 To this day, my mother and father have no idea how much I loved having my face painted as a child. In their defense I never told them but my grandmother never had to be told because she saw. My parents didn’t or couldn’t, not because they are bad parents but because of the dynamic of our family within the confines of divorce. You see, in second grade when my father made the decision to continue medicating himself with alcohol my mother made the decision to severe their relationship and I made the (albeit unconscious) decision to cope with it by trying to go unnoticed, to go unseen so as not to bother them or create more of a disruption within our household. It took me eighteen years, the loss of my grandmother and almost eleven hours of therapy to discover this and thus begin to combat it. I am the unseen child, it is my cancer and it has grown big and fast, shaping the way I see others and the way I allow them to see me or rather the way in which I don’t-- until this moment, until now, until three months ago when I hit rock bottom. I won’t go into detail because like with all rock bottoms one must first befriend time and embrace space before sharing it but I will say it’s completely transforming the child that hid for so long behind these hazel eyes. This past month, this past week, today, I have never been so desperate for community and vulnerability, to be known and to know, to serve and invest in the lives of those around me, to see and be seen. I am at the beginning of turning into a different being , I am on the verge and I’m no longer afraid of it’s bluff. If it’s true that authentic happiness often stems from the most broken of moments than this, this revelation and this new self is truly the start of one of my happiest moments.