a mother and daughter

Rows reserved. Family present. Sweet baby, gowned in lace.
And I remembered... a baptism. But what I didn't know... there were two being baptized.
Daughter. And Mother. Together.
I thought it beautiful... and brave.
Brave, to stand up as an adult, in front of your worshipping peers, and be baptized, when perhaps they assumed you had already embraced that gift.
Brave, to take a new step, after so many years had gone by.
Brave... to finally accept the invitation, when for years you kept casting it aside.

And while baptism itself is beautiful in its own right, this was somehow... more.
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Perhaps it is more to me each time I witness it... taking it into my heart all over again.  I was thirteen when I was washed clean... and I thought I knew, thought I understood it fully. I was wrong.  And when my children were baptized, it came to me... how fully I misunderstood the promise of a Savior. For the first time I questioned. Not Jesus, but the ways of religion... I knew it was right, but I didn't know why, and I felt as if I knew less than I had ever known.

But He has a way of working in a dark heart... and in a little girl's eyes and heart, He showed me Light.
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The little one accepted the water wailing, much as I had when I presented my own for the washing.  This time though, my smile was bright, and tears poured from my soul. Because I know. I know what it is to walk with Him, to love Him, to let Him love me. I know, at last, what it is to give a life away, and have it returned washed in His grace... forevermore.