LETTERS FROM MY DAD AND MOTHER: BAPTISM

A few Sundays ago my pastors invited all of us to renew our baptism. It was a rich, blessed service and I relived once again my children’s baptism: the joy, the memories of who was there, and the total belief they were surrounded in Christian love. I was so moved I wrote each of them cards reliving their baptism with them.

I had no memory of my own baptism, but I knew where to find information, the baby book my mother had carefully written in and just as carefully, preserved. I was baptized Easter Sunday, 1945, a little less than a year after my father left for somewhere in England. The ceremony took place at Fulton Evangelical and Reformed Church in Fulton, MI, my father’s home church, certainly the place of his baptism, his Sunday School, his high school ushering.  Mom reported “I wore my white dress Grandma Martens gave me and the pink sweater she crocheted. Grandpa Martens stood up with Mommy and I.” Two of my dad’s sisters, my dear aunts I would become so close to, were also there with their families.

My baptism
awash in affirmation
abiding love
from family and God. 
My mother and I
would not stand alone.
I belonged.
Secure within the Master's Touch.