Special Day

This past Sunday, Adly celebrated the milestone of being baptized. Baptism was honestly something that Adam and I went back and forth on for a long time. We are both Catholic and were raised as Catholics. I attended Catholic schools until college, Adam for most of elementary school. However, in our twenties we had both wavered in our feelings regarding religion and the Catholic church. When we met, neither of us were sure what kind of future we saw when it came to religion. When we got married, we made the decision to not get married in the church because we still hadn't come to any finite decisions as to where we saw ourselves religiously.

Then the miracle of a child happened for us. As with everything, they tend to change a lot of plans.

As I carried Adly, we went back and forth over the idea of godparents and baptism until we were blue in the face. We just couldn't seem to make a decision either of us were happy with. Right before Adly was born, we felt it was important to at least name guardians for Adly since at that point, we had decided not to baptize her. Our viewpoint at the time was that since we were so indecisive, she could make up her own mind once she was old enough and be christened into whichever religion she chose, if and when. We chose our friends Josh and Katie to be the guardians for Adly. This was not an easy decision for us. But being that we each have a number of brothers and sisters, all of whom are at very different points in their lives, we decided to look to our closest friends. When we made this decision, it was more from a legal standpoint. Only, drafting and creating a will become super overwhelming at nine months pregnant, so we stopped there.

Once Adly came, the conversation started again as our feelings began to change even more. Childbirth is something so miraculous and such a surreal experience that the idea of christening her began to nag at us once more. Again came the conversations about how, when, where....do we? After months of talking it over, we took our first baby steps and decided to start by joining a church close to our house. After attending a few times and feeling like it was a good fit, we decided to set things in motion. First thing was informing Josh and Katie that they would be named as godparents, not just guardians. They were thrilled. Then came telling our family, and our mostly Catholic parents. They too, were really happy. My mom had happened to subtly hand down my christening gown, which was also the same one she wore, at my baby shower months prior. I was excited to be able to carry on that tradition.

We chose to keep the baptism for immediate family only because, well, between the two of us our family alone is close to twenty people. On the day of, everyone came over for some lunch and conversation where she was also showered with some of the most thoughtful and beautiful gifts to commemorate her day.

In the end, I'm so glad we chose to baptize Adly. I think it's an important step that we, as her parents, could make to help guide her in creating a relationship with the big man upstairs.