On Becoming a Person.: Baptism

Paul and I started dating in November of 2003 - he had already finished college, and I was in my senior year at the University of Minnesota. That following April, my Dad's cancer, which had been in remission, returned - this time in his lymph nodes. I deferred my grad school acceptance in a last minute decision to move back to Lincoln following graduation. During the next year, Paul and my relationship got more and more serious, as I simultaneously watched my father get sicker and sicker and slip through all of our clinging fingers. We lost him in April 2005.

I will always and forever be grateful for the time I got with my Dad during that last year, and also for the time he and Paul got to spend together. Paul and I took his Lutheran Doctrine class at the Lutheran Student Center, and my dad would always remind Paul that he would make a very good pastor - an ELCA pastor, of course. My Dad grew to love Paul, in spite of the fact that he did not in fact grow up in or belong to the ELCA denomination (my father's vantage point for understanding the world). He would, however, frequently remind him that the Covenant Church (which Paul did grow up in), was really just an offshoot of the Lutheran Church. My Dad was like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding - everything somehow traced back to the ELCA and the teachings of Martin Luther.

In February 2005, months before we got engaged officially and without me knowing it, Paul asked my father for permission to ask me to marry him. This gift that he gave to him, to me, is still beyond my comprehension. At the time, my Dad was pretty filled up on morphine, but no amount of painkiller could make him neglect his allegiance to his beloved ELCA and the theology of the Lutheran Church. So, he told Paul yes - on one condition - that he would promise to someday infant baptize our children.

We have kept that promise, in the best way we know how. The church we belong to in Madison, also where Paul works, practices infant dedication, and we don't have any strong connections to ELCA pastors or churches nearby. So for both of the girls, we chose to do a baptism in our home, inviting our families and our community to be a part. Our friend Tim baptized both girls (traveling from Portland for Miss J's, bless his heart), and beforehand Paul and my sister coached him through just how my Dad would have done the baptism himself, had he been able. Oh, and had he been, he would have been bursting with pride. He liked nothing better than weddings and baptisms, one of the many reasons he so adored campus ministry.

So we baptized our girls to fulfill this promise to my Dad, but also to make so many promises to them - to love them as best as we can, to remind them constantly of the grace that is God's gift to them, to place others in their lives who will also love them, to raise them in the church in spite of all of its shortcomings and the inherent brokenness of humankind. Because at the end of the day, "the church" is our people - the people who speak truth into your life even when you don't want to hear it, the people who bring you chili and banana bread when the cancer is taking over and they don't know what else to do, the people who stand in your backyard and watch with love as you baptize your sweet tiny babe.

Two Saturday evenings ago, when we baptized J, it was a perfect fall evening in Madison. There was nothing I could do to contain my overwhelm as I looked around to see our families, our dearest of friends and our Madison community all present to support us and our promises to our girl. I have spent the greater part of my adult life attempting to come to terms with my own faith, and how it is not that of my father's, as heavily influenced by him as it might be. So part of me struggled, knowing it wasn't the typical Lutheran baptism that he likely had in mind that February 2005 evening. But another part of me knew, knows, that the pieces were all in place, and that our promises to teach and raise and love were the perfect combination of our promise to my father and our own faith story as a couple (and now a family).

Some photos from the weekend...