If you’ve been reading my first couple blog posts you probably know that I was born into and baptized in the Catholic Church. But when I was about two, my family and I moved and we stopped going. There was never a point in my life where I didn’t believe that there was a God, But from that point forward I wasn’t a good Catholic. I didn’t go to Sunday school, I had never taken my first communion, and I fell behind where a lot of people my age should have been. I never really felt this pressure until middle school, when some of my friends and acquaintances said that they went to church, and even though I identified myself as a Catholic, I felt left out. This continued until about ninth or tenth grade. I made close friends who happened to be very devout, God-fearing Christians. They encouraged me to join a group at school called FCA (AKA Fellowship of Christian Athletes). This group was a safe space for me, it allowed me to see the loving kind person that Jesus is, which is a side that I knew of but never truly felt or experienced. I listened to peers, that were my age, or younger, tell me about the work that God has done in their lives, and it got me thinking about how God has been with me in every step of my life. This group is also where I found leadership. In eleventh grade, in the beginning of the year, I led my first Bible study and prayed in public for the first time. This is where I realized not only that I had a love and a knack for public speaking and leadership, but also that I have a larger purpose and that is to share God’s message with everyone that I can. This club also brought together me and the man of my dreams – this will be an important detail later.
Now, at this point in my life, I felt like I was doing pretty good. I was doing Bible studies by myself every day. My boyfriend and I were doing them together learning about how to navigate a young Christian relationship in hopes of future marriage. But I would have never guessed that in the next few years, God would tell me to choose baptism for myself. I would argue with my Protestant friends that though I wasn’t a devout Catholic but rather a devout Christian, and yet I felt that my Catholic baptism, as a infant, was valid. That was my issue. I didn’t feel that I was a good Catholic, and I wasn’t, because I didn’t follow the rules or have the same values of the Catholic Church. Yet, I grew up in it, and didn’t feel as if it was okay for me to switch to a Protestant or nondenominational church either, even though I attended a nondenominational Church nearly every Sunday. What I didn’t realize then and I realized now is that it wasn’t about the church. It was about my relationship with Jesus Christ and it wasn’t okay for me to go half in on loving Jesus simply because I didn’t identify with a church, and that’s what I was doing. (Just to be clear, I am not here to change anyone’s beliefs based on arguing different denominational issues or differences – I don’t think that is helpful to my cause. If someone believes in our Lord and Savior then I am happy. I am just telling you my testimonial). That being said my faith dramatically changed once I entered college. Not necessarily my belief but my faith. I did a poor job at studying the Bible and praying daily. I made poor decisions when it came to prioritizing others over my relationship with God and myself. I quickly adopted a new group of friends who I got very close with very fast, not to say that is bad, but it made me start idolizing other things. I started participating in the things that you would imagine a college student would, and I felt like I lost my sense of self. There was also a lot of strain on me and my boyfriend. He was going to college about two and a half hours away close to our hometown. He had a similar experience with his new group of friends in experimenting with things. And in idolizing other things separately we not only lost light of God but each other as well. I became so anxious about him and his decisions that I lost trust without realizing it. Until one day I was really struggling. My boyfriend and I were on the verge of ending our relationship, I had been crying for too long, I was stressed out about exams, I found it hard to eat, sleep, hang out with my friends and do things I genuinely enjoyed. I kneeled with my Bible in front of me and I said, “Lord I can’t do this alone. Lord, I don’t know what to do. Lord, I need help, Lord give me a direction and allow me to be patient enough to wait for your answer.” In that moment, I felt an overwhelming peace that I had never felt before, and a thought came across my brain saying you need to be baptized. I texted my boyfriend, in a period of time we weren’t really communicating, that i needed to be baptized, because the weight of everything felt like it was crushing me, and Jesus was the only one that could take the weight off. He replied back immediately saying, “Okay. Come see me as soon as we can and we will get you baptized.”
After being baptized I now feel as if I have power. I have strength, finally, to take control of not only my emotions but I feel as if I am able to communicate and trust so much more effectively and unconditionally. Now, it is not hard to tell somebody how I feel, when before, especially in my romantic relationship, when my boyfriend would do something that would bother me, I felt as if it was burdensome if I told tell him how I truly felt. Instead, it bottled up and built up this weight that couldn’t be taken off because I hadn’t been saved yet. The same thing with my friends, I felt like they wanted to go out and act in foolish activity and I finally felt the power to say “I appreciate you guys as friends, and I love the way that you care about me as a friend, but I don’t want to engage in that activity because I believe that it is foolish and sinful,” and now I have the power to do that. Very recently for the first time I felt like it was okay to cry. I don’t think that I have ever wept and not hidden it. Until extremely recently I had a conversation with my mother that was extremely hard and I wept and didn’t hide it and I truly believe even that small doing was the work of God.
In many of these instances as you can see I used to be fearful. Baptism changed my fear into a sense of freedom. Being able to be the person that I want to be, and showing everyone how much I love the Lord, and how the Lord has made me into the woman that I am. I used to be so fearful whether it was anxiety about tests, my relationship, trust, a hard conversation, a new experience, competition, or finances, I now know that as long as I am the loving God-fearing version of myself and striving to be more and more like Jesus every single day, I have truly, nothing to worry about and he will take care of me.
I know that this type of testimonial is probably quite common, yet, somebody that made you scroll across my page and doesn’t know the love of our God I wanted to share my story of my rebaptism into the Christian faith.