Baptism

Until I met J.T. I had no idea that baptism was not something for babies.  I mean I guess if I gave it some thought I would have contended that as teenagers and adults came to embrace Christianity they would be baptized at a later time, but I always thought that if a baby was born into a Christian family he or she was baptized as an infant.  Enter my education on the Southern Baptist faith and the concept of being saved.

Now I had a friend in college who was Southern Baptist and it was either something we didn't discuss OR something I just failed to file away in my memory bank.  However, as J.T. and I discussed our future children (waaay back when) I discovered that when it came to baptism we saw things differently.  I wanted our child to be baptized as an infant and he wanted the child to choose for him/herself when this would take place like he did.

Fast forward to the actual birth of our child and the baptism conversation sat on a shelf--for quite awhile.  It wasn't until this past June that I felt convicted to officially join our church and have Isabella baptized (the second being contingent upon the first at our church).  I hoped J.T. would join with me and was thankful that he did.  We went through our church's membership classes and at the end baptism often comes up.  So here we were once again discussing the situation for which there is not a really good compromise (particularly once we found out our church believes baptism only takes place once in a person's life). 

However, after talking with one of the associate pastors we landed on baptizing Isabella now and then when she was older and fully understood accepting the Lord as her savior we would do a dedication ceremony which our church offers in these circumstances.

I also learned the reason people have their children baptized as infants and not toddlers:).  Isabella was as good as any 19 month old could be on a stage standing in front of a bunch of people "patiently" waiting her turn, but I was worn out by the time we were done from keeping her occupied.  That said, at the end of the day, the mission was successfully accomplished!