“This is our boy!” I wept as he arrived, marveling at the good long-awaited gift now tucked into my arms.
Josh and I had forgone the clumsy practice of the gender-reveal, opting instead for mystery and patience and curiosity that grew with the baby inside. Along the way, I had conflicting convictions about who this child would be, but never, not once, did I imagine they would be anything short of beloved.
As he passed through the waters of my womb into a world too often dehydrated of belonging, our love ran over. We greeted Liam with equal parts surprise and recognition. There he is. He is ours, and we are his. This is our boy.
“This is my church!” he declared with confidence as we walked into the sanctuary for the first time. Our old Kentucky home now in the rearview mirror yet forever in our hearts, we looped over the Appalachians, circled down into the Piedmont, and pulled our Subaru and a trailer full of books to a stop at 501 West Fifth Street.
Moving day contained the expected multitude of feelings: sheer excitement and unrelenting jitters, exhaustion and energy in constant conversation, and a chorus of infant and preschooler squeals in the background. Members of our search committee were there to meet us, embrace us and welcome us home, and it was beloved Nancy Baxley to whom Liam declared, his curls bouncing gleefully as he ran his first of many laps around the Sanctuary: This is my church!
“This is my story!” he opined with defiant pride. We sat writing, shoulder to shoulder, my flow interrupted every minute or so with a question he was pondering.
“What do you think baptism means?” he asked, less curious about my answer than the one he’d soon claim as his own.
“Why did Jesus die? Who resurrected him? Does this make sense? Am I answering the questions right?”
The questions spilled from his earnest heart, his adolescent imagination seasoned already with the sufferings of the world, his story of faith reflective of the deep well of compassion he brought into the waters of baptism. While he considered and discarded and reconsidered every response I made, I resisted every practiced urge I felt to fashion the story on his behalf, to edit with grace and grammar what he’d crafted, to press my voice into his.
It would come for him, I knew. The Word is always made flesh. The labor extended over a handful of winter nights finally drew to a close, and he dropped the pencil with a contented sigh. This is my story.
The morning of his baptism arrived. Dressed and ready before the sun rose, his questions shifted from theological to practical: Will the water be cold? How wet am I going to get? Now what do I say again? Are you going to be in there with me?
With tears already pricking my eyes as I imagined the moment that loomed ahead, I assured him all would be well. (Not sure which of us was more nervous, to be honest!) Despite the cold and rainy morning, the church felt alive with energy. Alice fitted Liam for his robe. Wally helped him feel the water temperature and told him once again that, as much as he’d like to, he can’t exactly do a cannonball into the baptistry. Kim made bets with him about the probability I’d cry. (Reader, she lost the bet.) Annabelle and Silas gave him extra hugs, and Mary and Scott pressed a delightful gift into his hands.
The time had come to step together into the waters, our prayers hanging in the steamy air all around. Even from up high, your beaming faces were alight with love. As Josh read Liam’s faith story, I looked over at my remarkable firstborn child, my mind flooded with a foretaste of what lies for him on the other side of the waters.
This faith will dance with doubt, I thought, its questions as transforming as its answers. It will become the foundation upon which you scaffold your life. Even as you wrestle with it, let its ground hold you, and by its waters, may you find rest.
“This baptism refuses to be dried. It will saturate your skin and your spirit for the rest of your life.”
This baptism refuses to be dried. It will saturate your skin and your spirit for the rest of your life. Let it. Remember it as often as you breathe.
This church will fail you and heal you. She will walk with you in death and, together with God, midwife you back to life. No joy will be complete apart from beloved community.
And as Buechner says, “This is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”
But as if from the very waters themselves, words ancient and true rose up in me to pass along to my child, words infused with inherent belonging and soaked with a sacred blessing far truer and more beautiful than any of my own:
This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.
Emily Hull McGee serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church on Fifth in Winston-Salem, N.C.
