Choices (Prayer Devotional for the week of May 26, 2013)

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Can you still be a parent without vinyl decals on your back windshield depicting each kid you have? Can you still be married if you don’t wear a band on your left ring finger? Can you still have a degree without displaying a framed diploma on your office wall?

I don’t think many folks would contest that the above answers are all yes, although some may be sillier examples than others. Still, I think such contemporary, outward displays of our life choices can help us better understand baptism. (Speaking of which, our annual river baptism and anniversary celebration is next Sunday. This year is particularly wonderful, because it is Crossroads’ 10th anniversary, and dozens of folks are planning to be baptized; what an exciting time!)

At Crossroads, we believe that baptism is vitally important. Granted, there is nothing extraordinary about the Bosque River (Amen?!), or the tap water in the baptistery (That’s the bathtub thingamajig behind the stage that we never use because everyone wants to be baptized in the river), or even someone’s swimming pool, like we’ve done in the past … it’s all just plain ol’ water.

What’s important is the choice to share your faith in a public way. Baptism itself is not a magic formula, but it is an expectation after you make a decision to follow Christ. When a couple exchanges rings at their wedding, there is an understanding that they are not ashamed to be associated with each other, so they wear the rings proudly. When we follow Jesus’ example to be baptized, we are showing our partnership with his death, burial and resurrection.

Jesus even commands us to baptize one another (see Matthew 28:18-20), so you could feasibly avoid it, but doing so really boils down to an act of disobedience. If you have made a decision for Christ but haven’t been baptized yet, what’s holding you back? Let’s talk about it.

Long weekend plans

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The kids are going on a camping trip with Dad and a couple of uncles for the long weekend. (Male-bonding, arr, arr, arr!) Normally, I relish my “me time,” but I’m feeling oddly ambivalent about it. Maybe it’s because I’m concerned about how well they will behave in front of extended family. Maybe it’s because I’ll just be at home instead of hanging out with girlfriends on a weekend get-away somewhere.

The two things I really ought to do (clean house and get ahead on schoolwork) don’t sound like a very appealing way to spend a long weekend. Part of me wants to go out and do something, and another part of me just wants a nap.

The last time I took a personality test (one of a battery of inventories and screenings before I went  overseas to work in the mid-90s), I scored ESFJ on the Myers-Briggs test. I think the assessment is still pretty accurate, though it’s worth noting that I scored ever-so-slightly to the “extrovert” side of the mid-line. I think, perhaps, that’s why I enjoy alone time. I like being around people, sometimes, but I also appreciate – and need – time to myself.

Time to think. Time to process the to-do lists and what-if scenarios. Time to manage stress and daydream about the ideas that swirl around my brain.

So, I’m trying to think positively about having the house to myself for a few days. I can purge some old stuff that the boys won’t miss while they aren’t around to change their minds and beg to keep it. I can tackle my bedroom, which has become a repository for all things in need of mending, sorting, filing, storing or donating. I can think about what I want my life to look like … what might need to change and how.

I can think uninterrupted about what life is turning out to be like as a solo parent for real, and not just the way it has been during each deployment. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll be solo forever. I have laughably little dating experience; in fact, I can only think of two times that a guy asked me out after I moved away from home, and one was a blind double-date. The last guy’s name was Monty; he was a grad student studying literature. He wrote poetry. We went to dinner, talked about books, and I didn’t hear from him again until I ran into him at the grocery store a few years later. He was recovering from chicken pox and looked a fright.

(You might wonder why I didn’t include my future husband in the way-back-when dating list; that’s because we never dated. We hung out with the same friends in college and knew each other well, but he never asked me out, and then I graduated & moved away. We corresponded long distance, saw each other a couple of times on weekends when we were both in the same state, then I left the country, and he proposed when I returned.)

So, anyway … enough with my pity party … I have closets to sort and rooms to clean.