Sunday, June 21, 2009

Isabelle's Baptism

We had Isabelle baptized Sunday. It has been a journey to reach the decision but one worth taking. We grew up baptist and while we made the decision to help start and be part of an Anglican church about 6 years ago we had not fully come to understand infant baptism when Isabelle was born and instead chose to have her dedicated which our little church was happy to accomodate. But now as Isabelle has grown and our understanding and love of the Anglican church has grown I felt a longing for Isabelle be able to more fully participate in the worship service with us. AKA take communion. Communion was the first thing I came to fall in love with about the liturgical service. To see families go up together and participate in the Lord's Supper. At first it disturbed me because I grew up baptist and children don't take communion until they make a profession of faith. I was watching 2 year olds go up and take communion and wasn't sure how I felt about that. But over the weeks and months I came to see instead the family unit sharing their faith through the Lord's Supper and it became a beautiful thing which brought tears to my eyes for weeks. I don't know if I can fully explain it but I know that was my first love of the Anglican church. As Isabelle grew and watched us take communion every week she began to reach out to do it too and we would hold her back knowing she shouldn't participate because she wasn't baptized. We began asking questions about infant baptism and the idea behind baptizing children. I needed to understand, John needed to understand. I got there before him and waited. Finally this spring I told him I was ready and asked him to pray about what was holding him back. We met with our pastor and afterward John said he was ready. Something had finally clicked in him as well. Now some of you may be dying to hear an explanation of infant baptism here but you will not get it. I understand it for myself but am not ready to stand as any sort of expert on the subject. Sorry.

Today was the day. We were to read a scripture we chose for her life. We chose PS 89:1-2, "I will sing of the Lord's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself." I chose this as I think about her love of music and deep awareness of it that Jake never had. I can imagine her singing "of the Lord's great love forever". My mom caught John reading the last part.



Isabelle loves a stage and was constantly grabbing the microphone. Turns out it had no batteries. John figured this out quickly and let her go with it.

After quite a bit of excitement when we first told her about it she suddenly was telling me this week that she was afraid to get baptized and so I really had no idea how she would react or if she might even be up there yelling that she didn't want to be baptized which I didn't think would go over very big with our still baptist parents. :) Luckily when the time came God was there with her and she was excited and peaceful. Of course the memory on my camera quickly filled up with the above video so there is no actual picture of the event. Luckily Lauren, Isabelle's birthmom did bring her camera as well (since neither of the grandparents did) and she took a few more pictures for us. She videoed the actual baptism but I don't know how to save it to my computer off facebook. Anyone?







I am sure you are all noting our mother/daughter outfits courtesy of sewing day with Grandma. We got many compliments.

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