Super 8

Today was the baptism of my 8 year old nephew, Shmibbers. It was also his eighth birthday—the age of accountability. So many thoughts flooded into my mind as I watched this sweet boy make such big promises to God. Eight is such a tender age to covenant that you are willing to serve God and keep His commandments, bear one another’s burdens, and stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things, and in all places. Yet there was Shmibbers: so sweet, so smart, so willing, and so full of love.

I was just eight when I made the same promises. I remember my excitement—how much I looked forward to making covenants with God, how much my father and I practiced the immersion dunk (sans water) in our living room, and how much I wanted to be perfect. I remember my white dress, my fluffed bangs, my family smiling down at me in the baptismal font, my father’s strong hands that held mine—how large they looked around my tiny wrists, the warmth of the water rushing over my face, and the feeling of peace that wrapped around me when I surfaced. I smiled, hugged my father, and turned to see my mother there at the stairs, smiling and crying as she waited for me in the dressing room.

I know a lot more now than I did then: about my faith, about my church, about my worldview, and about this life—but I knew then just as much as I know now that God loves me. He trusts me now, as much as he trusted me then to keep the promises I made. “I am a Child of God,” was scripted on the necklace my great aunt Cat gave me that day. I am still such a child. I am so far from perfect—so much further than I was when I was baptized. But I’ll keep trying. I’ll keep taking the sacrament every week to repent and renew my promises with God. And as I do, I know that He keeps His end of the bargain. I love how clean, new and motivated I feel when I remember that this is all that life is really about anyway. Thanks for the reminder, Shmibbers, and happy birthday.