As I mentioned, we are spending the season of Lent telling stories. As we wait for the light to return, as we wait for Easter, for resurrection, for new life, we’ll answer together: How did you come to the waters? and Where has the Spirit taken you since that day? Guest writers and friends will join us each week, and I hope you will too!
You may not resonate with everything you read, and that is okay, even the point. Storytelling is a window into another perspective, another way of viewing the world. Storytelling connects us to experiences we might otherwise never encounter. These stories will remind us that there are as many expressions of life with God as there are people.
I’ve been stuck for days now, trying to figure out how I want to tell you the stories of my baptisms. I’m stuck still, as I sit here to write. Perhaps we can meander our way through them together.
I was first carried to the waters in the arms of my Mother, all 99 pounds of her. At the time, she and my Dad stood center stage underneath the cathedral ceiling of First United Methodist Church in Hyattsville, MD. Behind them hung the organ’s massive pipes along with a large golden cross. Before them, lined in pews on either side of a long aisle of bright red carpet, sat the congregation of 1,000 members. All along the sides and in the very back, stood floor to ceiling stained glass windows. And there, in Mama’s arms, was infant me. Dressed in the same baptismal gown my grandfather wore before me.
My grandfather’s baptism took place in Japan where he was born to missionary parents in 1908. My grandmother was born there as well. It’s where they met, married, and had their first three babies, my mother being the oldest. When Mom was just three years old, WWII broke out, and because they were technically US citizens they were forced to the waters of a different kind, to be carried by boat to their “homeland.” The baptismal gown must have been deemed precious enough to make the journey with them. So there I was, donned in it, and brought to waters as well. Where might these waters carry me?
Looking back on this now, 60 years later, I sense the waters not only carried me forward into my own life and calling, but took me backward as well, reaching into the lives of the ancestors who preceded me. I feel especially connected to two of them whom I have never met: My great-grandmother, Fanny Alexander, and my 10th-great-grandfather from the 1600’s, Paul Gerhardt. One in Japan, the other in Germany. As I look at and learn about their lives, I see the ways I am carrying forward the work they did in their ministries of hospitality, writing, and soul care. Being baptized in an ancestral gown feels like having been baptized not only into a faith in Jesus, but the faith of my fathers and mothers as well. The river runs deep.
Speaking of rivers, that leads me to my second baptism. The one of my own choosing. I was 23 at the time and in Europe on a 9-month missionary stint when I learned we’d be spending several weeks in the Holy Land. While there, I stepped into the waters of the Jordan River and under I went. I came up glowing. I remember someone putting a towel around my shoulders and then a group gathering around me. Some were the friends I was traveling with, but others were strangers. Strangers who laid their hands on me and prayed with passion. Prayed blessing and filling, prayed sending and gifts. This time the river ran even deeper, reached even farther back, beyond that of my 10th-great-grandfather all the way to Jesus. How might I carry on the work he began? How might I be clothed in the garment of love he wore?
I suppose as I sit here with these stories I am now left wondering two things:
What am I clothed in?
And what am I carrying on?
Thanks for wondering alongside me. For witnessing the waters that have brought me here and the waters that carry me still.
Jenny Gehman, East Coast Rep for Mennonite Women USA, is a spiritual director, freelance writer, and retreat facilitator. Passionate about the healing hospitality of God, Jenny finds deep joy in creating safe spaces for others to set their souls down and sift through what’s there. You can read more of Jenny’s writings at Little Life Words here on substack and connect with her further at jennygehman.com