just another morning here

Quite some time ago, I said to Anna that the birthday present I would love the most would be a CD that she could make/record for me. I even picked one of my favourite songs and got her the music for it. She and Steve began working on it, but it was a fairly disastrous process for many reasons – they kept falling out with one another, and there was never enough time when they were both home to work on it anyway. Getting tired of the back room being set up like a recording studio, I decided that it really wasn’t worth it and called the whole thing off.

Anyway, Anna managed to find something that means far more to me than a CD – she decided to get baptised. Actually she’d wanted to get baptised for quite some time but I think I put her off when she was really little, wanting her to be a bit older and wiser … and she put herself off at some point too, I think! Her trip to Romania over the summer was formative in the decision making process coming round again, and she has decided for sure this time. By chance it was planned to happen on a weekend close to my birthday, so we had a lovely family celebration day with my parents and Steve’s parents.

Baptisms are one of those things that invariably make me cry (along with nativity plays and the opening music to Fly Away Home), and over the past few weeks I haven’t even been able to think about Anna’s baptism without getting emotional, so I’m writing here what I couldn’t quite say today, for fear of embarrassing her (and myself!).

I can’t actually think of many things that I would value more, or be more proud of, than one of my children choosing to make a commitment of their own to the faith that means so much to me. I often worry that we’re doing a rubbish job with parenting, muddling through and making the best decisions we can, but not necessarily being sure about very much. But this has reassured me that despite my failures as a parent, God has a plan for my children, He wants to know them individually and personally, and that is something I am incredibly grateful for. The emotional occasion was probably made all the more moving for me by the fact that she asked my Dad to baptise her, along with Andy our own church leader, and that was very special.

Possibly the best birthday present ever (maybe even outdoing some of Steve’s gifts over the years ), and definitely a good reason for another ‘ditch the diet’ day. I have mentioned Esther’s and Ben’s baptisms on this blog in years gone by. Very pleased to add another. Lots of Anna’s friends came to church/the pool to support her, too, which was lovely.

We followed the baptism with lunch at ASK; we picked it because it’s cunningly situated on the Cathedral Green so that Josiah could down his dinner and then run back across in time for Evensong. We went to the service as well, after a slightly more leisurely dessert. After that followed some furniture removal (come on, what celebratory day is complete without it?!) then a cup of tea and some cake

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2012 at 18:50 and is filed under anna, celebrations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.