Baptism: Freed From My Fears

My hands are shaking. My heart is beating faster. My thoughts are racing a million miles a minute. I search for you, but I can’t find you in this place of darkness and utter confusion. Where are you Lord! I need you now, in this place, in this moment. How at this moment of my greatest need is it that I can’t find you. Do you even care that I am drowning? Does my problem even matter enough for you to reach out your hand to grab mine to say that it will be okay? What more do you need from me to just tell me that you care?

I find myself in this all too familiar place where fear takes hold of me. It is hard to escape the darkness and what ifs that have entered into my very thoughts. I feel like I am stuck in quicksand, but ever so slowly getting deeper and deeper into a place where I am unable to escape. I call upon your name, but you don’t answer. How can that be? Here I am at church, in my baptism clothes scared as ever waiting for you to guide me up to the pool. I can’t move. I don’t feel you with me. The fear is grasping on to me so tightly. I can’t make it out of my seat. Then I remind myself of everyone who is there for me and everyone who encouraged me to take this step. I slowly get up out of my seat to make my way to the pool. I am still shaking and still scared as ever. I pray to you and ask you to calm my fears just like Psalm 34:4 says: I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. (NLT) I still feel so far from you despite the fact that this was about one of the most obedient steps I could take in my walk with you.

I step into the line, still scared and still feeling as if this was a huge mistake. The fear thoughts creep deeper and deeper into my head. They are telling me that I shouldn’t be up here. That I made a mistake. That my faith isn’t strong enough to take this step. That going under the water is going to be scary. They are also asking me, what if so and so sees you up here? What if you slip and fall going into the pool? Finally, it is my turn to enter the pool. Still scared as ever, I enter the pool using the ladder. As I make my way into the pool something changes. When my feet entered the water I feel calm and at peace. I finally realize that God has been there all long. Making my way to the place in the pool where I will get baptized God is finally with me every step of the way. My fear had been making it nearly impossible for me to find him. When I finally let him take over it was a whirlwind of emotions. I got baptized, hugged the person who baptized me and then made my way out of the pool realizing just how great it was to finally take this step of faith. I felt new and knew that God could pull me up out of anything! I was so relieved that I decided ignore my fears and move forward with the commitment I had made that day. You were there at the most timely moment and I couldn’t have better planned your entrance into that moment than you had.

For years I had put off baptism. At first it was because I didn’t understand why I need to even be baptized. I already knew that I was saved because I had put my faith in Jesus years before. I didn’t feel that baptism was necessary. I had talked with a few different people on the subject, but could never fully grasp why it was needed. Then a couple of years before I was baptized, I understood a bit more but then my fear of going under the water and fear of people finding out that I am a true Christian would come out. So I put it off. The more I put it off the worse the fear got. Finally, I had enough motivation to take the plunge (insert TV laugh track). I wrote up why I wanted to be baptized and sent out invitations to key friends and mentors. It took a lot of nudging from God to even make my way to the church that day, but looking back I am so glad that I finally decided to take that next step of faith. He showed me more than I could ever imagine on that day and ever since. I know that I can trust him with anything because he was there when I was about as scared as I could be. It was just letting him take over instead of my own fear. It was purposefully being in that very moment and not letting anything else distract me for what he had planned for me in that moment.