This is my personal essay about how being at GCU helped me to realize I wanted to get baptized.
It’s Tuesday. I don’t have class, so I let myself sleep in a little before getting ready. I go about my day as usual, doing homework, and taking breaks at irregular intervals. If I’m honest, they are probably more frequent than the time spent actually doing homework. By the time I look at the clock, it’s almost six, which means I need to head down to life group.
All I had left was to do was put on my shoes and wait for my roommate to be ready. Once she checked herself in the mirror not once, but three times, she claimed to be ready. The whole way down the hallway, she complained about my desire to be early to everything. This was something we never agreed on, something she would just never understand.
I hate being late. It makes everyone stare at you decide that you either don’t care or you’re incompetent.
We walk into the somewhat spacious room and plop down on the brown leather couch. Only the main people are here, the rest have yet to trickle in. My heart is beating steadily now, but I know it is only a matter of time until the blood is rushing. When someone would say something and I would be revealed as a fraud. Sure, I had grown up in a Christian home and believed that I really was living my life the way I was supposed to be. But why did it feel like I was years behind everyone else in their walk? Everyone else claimed to be involved in their churches and could recite the books of the Bible. Everyone else talked in those hushed tones and whispered, “amen” under their breath. Who was I to sit here and call myself a Christian when I didn’t have “He>i” tattooed on my wrist or on my Instagram bio? When I wasn’t baptized yet?
I sat there quietly, expecting Life Group to be like every other week. We would say our, “happy crappy’s” and our leader would pray us in before we dove into the Word. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, we were going to do some role playing.
Our life group leader had written all of our names down on pieces of paper and placed them in a cup. She explained to us how she was going to draw out a name and we would be partnered with someone else in the room to reenact how a Believer would share the Gospel with someone who was on varying levels of Christianity.
As I sat there and watched the others play their roles, I uncrossed my legs and laughed along with the other girls. She probably wouldn’t even call on me.
Then, Christina reached back into the cup and swished around the paper names. I looked around the room at everyone else sitting there. Some had pulled out their phones, others were staring blankly at a wall. No one seemed nervous. Apparently, that was just me.
She picked my name. I crossed my legs.
“I want you to play a halfway Christian. I want you to pretend like you think you are saved, but in reality, you aren’t. Can you do that?”
My heart started to race. I was gonna have to sit here and act like I was pretending to be a halfway Christian in front of all these people. They always say you are either on fire for the Lord or you aren’t saved. So where did that leave me?
I answered the questions and returned a few of my own, some humorous comments thrown into the mix to get them off my trail. I expected them to tell me I was doing great, but instead I got a, “you are acting too much like a Christian, you need to tone it down”. How could I be acting like too much of a Christian if I was a literally just answering the questions as honestly as I could?
But that was just it.
I had spent all this time thinking that I needed to be perfect or somehow worthy of Jesus in order to publicly proclaim that I had given my life to Him. But that’s simply not possible. We have been taught over and over that we will never be worthy, and for some reason I thought that I was the exception. I had never fully grasped the concept until right now. And coming to this realization of how I would never be good enough for God's grace was such a moment for me. It was one of relief. One where I realized that failing isn't necessarily a bad thing. And for me, that means a lot.
The rest of life group, I sat there quietly, lost in thought about this newfound revelation. I had always been embarrassed that I wasn’t baptized yet. That I was somehow late to join the ‘born-again club’. Most people I knew got baptized in their early teens, and here I was, twenty and feeling nowhere ready until this moment.
All these years I have had my parents telling me that maybe I wasn’t saved. That maybe I wasn’t being a good enough Christian. I have been forced to go to churches and camps and only listen to Christian music and watch films with good morals. But being here in college? Being on my own? I finally have a choice. I can finally choose what to watch, wear, listen to.
And you know what?
I choose Jesus.
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