Confronting Baptism
My effort to reclaim my infant baptism and offer up broken promises
In this article you will find:
Why (I thought) infant baptism is stupid.
Why I had my baby daughter baptized in an ugly dress.
How baptism (infant baptism included) changes my family’s life daily.
Here we go:
Why Infant Baptism is Stupid
The Catholic priest couldn’t hide his frustration. I had just told him that the certificate I was handing him was “from the real baptism” I had received at the Vineyard church down the street.
I recalled that emotion-filled day, two years before this exchange with the priest, when I had stood on the stage of an elementary school auditorium that served as a Vineyard church on Sundays. I had proclaimed a lengthy, disorganized testimony about how, in all my 19 years of experience, I had never encountered God where “those fake (I meant “traditional”) Christians” would expect:
I hadn’t met Him in all the classical sacred music I had sung.
I hadn’t seen Him in the fanciful churches I had seen across Europe.
And I had certainly never witnessed Him from the seat of a traditional pew.
The Holy Spirit overwhelmed me with his love, not while I was in the midst of an emotional chorus, but during a moment of silence.
He had warmed my soul, not in a magnificent cathedral, but while I lay on the dirty carpeted floor of a youth group room as a 17-year-old.
My family (like many others) had a tradition of baptizing their babies with no intention of stepping inside a church again. Whatever promises my parents had said “yes” to at my infant baptism, they had not intended to keep. And even if they did, those promises are something only I could make on my own behalf – not something that could be made by someone else for me.
These were all details I had included in my little speech before hundreds of people watched me get dunked into the inflatable pool that served as a baptism font.
Now in front of this priest, who now had my Vineyard church baptism certificate in his hand, I was making the case that this piece of simple, standard printer paper would fulfill the documentation requirement to marry my fiance, of whom I loved dearly despite him having the unfortunate characteristic of being Catholic (a factor I was sure I was going to fix soon.)
The priest gently told me, “There is only one baptism. Baptism can only be done once.”
“Then the one at the Vineyard church,” I stood firmly, “that’s the certificate for my only baptism.”
Fast Forward Three Years
I surprised myself and my husband by entering the Catholic Church after a rollercoaster of discovery and RCIA. As part of that journey, I reluctantly acquiesced that the baptism I had when I was an infant was the one and only baptism of my life.
Now, my story here is not meant to cover the apologetics related to the Bible and Tradition that led me to that point. This story is about my personal encounter with living the sacrament of baptism. I’ll list some recommended resources written by far better-qualified individuals at the end of this article in case you are interested in getting more of an explanation on the theology and practice.
Back to my story: It was the Easter Vigil, and the chapel was all history and wood panels, dimly lit and intimate, as I was received into the Church. A generous quantity of holy oil was anointed on my forehead and ran down my face to join the tears on my cheeks. I couldn’t deny the indelible mark the Sacrament of confirmation had upon me—these Sacraments that Jesus so lovingly and intentionally gave us.
As I wiped the stinging balm out of my eyes with the clean, wadded-up toilet paper my newly-minted-godmother handed me, I couldn’t help but think: Whatever the world had intended for this toilet paper, and for myself, God had his own plan. Whether promises had or hadn’t been kept on this side of heaven, our merciful God had kept them He had kept them in excess.
Fast Forward Four More Years - Why I had my daughter baptized in an ugly dress
Just days before my adopted daughter’s baptism, my voice was filled with nostalgia and awe as I phoned my mother to tell her I would be using the very baptismal gown in which I had been baptized as an infant.
My mother is not overly sentimental; I mean, this woman let me use her wedding dress as a Halloween costume. So, the fact that this baptismal gown had survived all this time was a clear indication it was special, right?
“Oh,” she said with a surprise that did not match my nostalgia. This “oh” elicited a sentiment of “that old rag?”
I then learned that when she was going to have me baptized as an infant, she had a dress in mind that took on all the fashionable trappings of the early 90’s. Think: puffy-shouldered sleeves. A maximum of frills. Something a bit bold. If I had had any hair at the time, it probably would have been made to look as large as possible.
Instead of getting to live out her 80s holdover flair baby dress dreams, my great-grandmother had inadvertently emotionally manipulated my mother into using a very simple, minimally decorated, store-bought dress for the occasion.
In the strangeness of how my brain works, this just makes the dress even more important to me.
This was not only a dress of unintended and forgotten promises but one that didn’t even fulfill the cutesy family party goals of the event of my infant baptism.
The only value of this dress was that it honored my own baptismal right as priest, prophet, and king.
And now it would take part in claiming my own infant daughter in baptismal right.
This dress was a witness to a promise never meant to be kept by those who participated in it. And yet, a promise that God had kept, was keeping, and ever will keep.
...
The baptism was just two days before Valentine’s Day. Butterfly’s First Mom (Whom I’ll call Mama Butterfly for clarity, though they don’t share the same first name) and I laughed as I attempted to put the tights I had ordered from Amazon on the skinny-legged object of our love. Almost in stereo, we called the un-tight tights “looses” as we attempted to finesse the excessive folds of fabric into compliance.
As Mama Butterfly helped me button my baptismal gown on the baby, my mind wandered far into the future – would Mama Butterfly and I be standing side-by-side again someday, helping Butterfly into her wedding dress? Marriage: yet another Sacrament that leaves an indelible mark on its participants. Even if they fail to live up to the promises they make. Even if we attempt, in our misunderstandings, in our brokenness, to deny the reality that we cannot undo or redo those sacraments.
...
Near the end of the baptismal rite, the priest prayed aloud over me, “May [God] bless the mother of this child.”
I looked for Mama Butterfly out of the corner of my eye, but couldn’t find her in the large crowd of family and community that had supported us during our adoption journey. My heart beat in my ears with both pride and shame at how the prayer – calling me this child’s mother – made me feel.
This prayer felt more real than taking this baby home from the hospital.
This prayer felt more official than when the guardianship paperwork had been signed.
“[This mother] now thanks God for the gift of her child,” the prayer continued.
My throat constricted with simultaneous gratitude and heartbreak over Mama Butterfly and what she had been through and was going through and would go through.
But also, in light of the reality of God the Father and his eternal parenthood of this child, it was so much easier to share this earthly motherhood with Butterfly’s First Mom. It would become so much easier to start calling Mama Butterfly “First Mom” and for the title to not feel like an assault on my place in this child’s life.
At that moment I wished I could squeeze Mama Butterfly’s hand, thank her for this gift, and make sure she understood that I understood that this child will ALWAYS be her child too.
“May [Mary] be one with [this mother] in thanking Him forever in heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Most of all, this child was a child of God. And the eternal parenthood of the Father was more than me or Mama Butterfly could ever offer this beautiful soul.
And if that was how I felt so about this baby girl as we stood beside the baptismal font – so much her mother – then how much more am I the daughter of the Most High?
And I became it in that very same dress.
With similar words. In this One Baptism.
I became His adopted child.
Fast forward another 7 years – Claiming baptism as a way of life
I put a holy water font on the wall of our main hallway so I could be a Super Catholic MomTM and like... teach my kids Catholic things. Ya know?
But these kids are now addicted to the blessings.
When I go to pray over our children at night, and if I have nothing but my fingers to make the cross on his forehead, 3-year-old Thunder is somewhat offended, “You pretend!! No bless water!? Go church and get!!!”
In the morning, as I carry 3.5-year-old Engineer out of his bedroom, wrapped up like a little burrito in his favorite blankie, and I make the sign of the cross on his forehead, he grins and cuddles in deeper.
And 8-year-old Butterfly disappeared after mass last Sunday only to reappear with a bottle filled with holy water. She declared, “We NEED holy water in our font! We’re all out!”
Yes, I got the holy water font for the kids. But perhaps the greatest impact has been for me personally.
Because throughout each day I fail miserably at my vocation as a wife and mother, and as a child of God. And there are multiple times a day when I feel unworthy of my responsibilities as priest, prophet, and king. I feel like a wadded-up piece of toilet paper that, at best, should be destined for a snotty nose and then the garbage.
But now I can’t leave my bathroom, having just spent 15 minutes playing on my phone and avoiding co-parenting with my husband...
I can’t leave my bedroom, having just hidden under the covers because I was overstimulated and needed a break...
I can’t leave my kids’ bedrooms after yelling at a child because I found the contents of the closet I just organized being dumped out all over the floor...
...without being confronted by the holy water font and the crucifix that crowns it.
In those moments, Jesus asks me to reclaim my identity as his beloved daughter, with whom he is well pleased.
I am not free to be complacent. My options are to either reject that invitation or to reclaim the place he has prepared for me in His Kingdom... even if at that moment I feel like I suck at everything.
There are times I am, quite literally, rolling my eyes at myself and at the audacity of this loving God (Ok, ok, Lord. You love me anyway. Help me to do better?) as I make the sign of the cross on my forehead with the holy water.
Because His love is so much bigger than any of my excuses or failures.
This Sacrament is so much bigger than what my parents understood the promises to mean at my baptism because God does most of the work in a Sacrament.
He keeps promises when we won’t or can’t. And we can’t undo being His.
To explore more on the theology and Tradition that supports infant baptism, please check out these sources generously recommended by Substacker who writes :
Infant Baptism - by Catholic Answers
To Explain Infant Baptism You Must Explain Original Sin - by Catholic Answers
We have 2 holy water fonts in our house that I perpetually forget to fill, and this post makes me want to be better at keeping them full for myself and our kids!