[Content warning: brief mention of SA]
First Baptism
One of my earliest memories of church is standing during a hymn for an altar call (I was about seven years old) and tugging on my mother’s sleeve. She leaned down and I whispered that I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart.
I vaguely remember walking to the front and talking to the Southern Baptist pastor. He questioned me to make sure I understood what I was doing. I didn’t, but my answers must have been satisfactory. Later, as we both stood in the baptismal pool facing the congregation, I believe he mentioned my young age and said something about coming to Jesus as a child before lowering me into the water.
The motivation for my first public profession of faith is unknown to me now. Was I moved by the thought of Jesus dying for the bad things I’d done? Did I want to be more “grown up” like my parents (I am a firstborn)? Or maybe I was simply scared of hell.
Other early experiences were even hazier, like the time I tumbled down the church’s marble stairs and needed stitches under my chin. I have no real memory of that, but I still have the scar.
Something I remember more clearly: my grandfather operating the audio equipment in a sound booth in the balcony. To me, that space was the holy of holies—filled with strange, powerful dials that I couldn’t touch but my grandpa controlled.
My grandfather was a special person in my young life. He fixed watches and clocks for a living and then, in his spare time, played the piano by ear, told bad puns, and would sometimes emit this slow, quiet chuckle when watching movies like The Apple Dumpling Gang.
Unfortunately, he passed away when I was 15, and it wasn’t until much later that I learned about his strongly worded “letters to the editor” (he kept all the newspaper clippings in a faded, red scrapbook). When not bemoaning “giddy-headed” readers of novels or decrying the evils of daylight savings time, he voiced his vehement opposition to gambling, drinking, and dancing, as well as sex education in schools (I can’t judge my grandpa too much because I would also use my pen to protest what I believed at the time was moral corruption in society).
The mild-mannered grandfather I knew, however, did not lecture about sin. He was not stern or strict. I’m reminded of the verse in II Corinthians, speaking of the Apostle Paul: “For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak.’” My grandpa wasn’t weak, but he was kind which can be mistaken for weakness.
My fondest memory of my grandfather was when he waited with six year old me in the empty, three-bedroom brick house my parents had purchased. We sat silently on the new carpet, looking out an open window in what would become my little sister’s room, and watched for the moving truck and my family’s car. One day, there would be a magnificent mimosa tree in the front yard, but that day we simply viewed the street through the clean, wire mesh as a soft breeze brushed our faces. I felt completely safe, and he was one of the few men who made me feel that way.
It saddened me when the church upgraded the sound booth with high-tech instruments, and my grandpa’s services were no longer needed. At least, that’s my recollection. My mom recalls him volunteering until his health failed. But it’s sad either way. He so loved what he did.
Second Baptism
My next baptism was at a suburban Baptist church that my parents joined when I was ten or so. They’d left the downtown church when they realized they were criticizing the newly selected pastor more than they were worshipping with God’s people.
Like my first salvation experience, I also don’t know what compelled me, at 11 or 12, to make a second profession of faith and be baptized again. The pastor was a powerful preacher, so that might have contributed. More likely, it was due to feeling guilty for just about everything.
Some of that guilt was a by-product of certain doctrines (like being born a sinner and worthy of eternal torment) but it was also due to misplaced blame after being sexually abused as a very young child by someone outside my immediate family. Years later, and after I’d leave the faith, I would find a good therapist who’d help me deal with what happened to me in the past. She’d also help my adult self forgive my child self for building harmful, though understandable, protective walls.
Whatever the reason for my second attempt at being born again, I don’t remember speaking to the pastor or being rebaptized. Memories I do have during that time in my life: standing in line outside the church and waiting in hot, sticky heat to march into the sanctuary for the start of Vacation Bible School, eating spaghetti at Wednesday Night Supper in the neon-lit Fellowship Hall before the weekly prayer meeting, and watching my mom (she was one of the church secretaries) manually load the printer with black ink to create the Sunday bulletin.
My mother also sang contralto in a women’s trio (they sometimes provided “special music” during worship services) and one afternoon they practiced in the large, empty sanctuary. I’m not sure why, but I was there, as well as the soprano’s daughter. We didn’t really know each other. In our kid’s group, she was pretty and popular and I was skinny and awkward. But I guess we got bored, sitting and listening, and ended up together in the back of the space. She somehow persuaded me to follow her as she covertly crawled up a side aisle from the back of the sanctuary all the way to the front. I stealthily crawled right behind her, worried we might get in trouble but also thrilled to be so adventurous.
Third Baptism
I do remember why I was baptised for the third time, around the age of 17. When I looked back at my first two professions, I realized I hadn’t been mature enough to fully comprehend the commitment I was making. Which is not to say I wasn’t serious about my decisions as a child. I was born serious. But I wasn’t that “new creature” a true Christian was supposed to be. So, as a young adult, I hoped I could finally trust Christ with my whole heart and then my whole life would be permanently changed.
The third baptism itself, though, is a blur. Still at the suburban Baptist church, I somewhat recall putting on a robe then waiting for my turn as I stood behind the wall on the “ladies” side.
Something I’ve thought of since: the suburban church was less ornate than the downtown church—the former having plenty of light paint and little ornamentation and the latter, plenty of dark wood, two-story arches, and stained glass. Moving from the more elaborate to the less so would continue once I became Reformed Baptist a few years later.
Until then, I participated in the youth choir (even sang a shaky solo or two), went on mission trips (where teen couples had sex in the back of the bus), and attended a Bill Gothard conference (the teachings of which I’d later be highly critical of).
I did my best to be a good Christian. I read my Bible, tried to pray, and held to the basic tenets of the Christian faith as I’d been taught them: that the Bible was inspired and inerrant, that there was one all knowing, all powerful, all present triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, born of a virgin, sinless in life, sacrificed for the sins of all people, raised from the dead then ascended into heaven where he reigns until his second coming, and that humanity is born in sin, separated from God, and the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Little did I know how my beliefs would evolve over the years. But first, I had to meet my husband-to-be at the Bill Gothard conference mentioned earlier. I was walking up a concrete ramp to the auditorium and he was bouncing down it. He was energy embodied. Trim, athletic—glowing. He introduced himself, although I knew who he was (he’d been on our youth pastor’s “Most Wanted” list for months). Before his sixteenth birthday he’d experienced drugs, sex, and juvenile detention. He liked to angle his stereo speakers together on the floor, lie with his head between them and blast Black Sabbath. He said he thought about God when he was high.
I am looking forward to reading more of your experience and journey...