I am unscathed.

Dickens is really helping with my vocabulary… I find myself speaking in round-a-bout sentences more than usual now that I’m back in a classic reading frame of mind.

I am back from the mall. I was successful. Renae is a saint. Ry-girl fell in love with the Clarinet Salvation Army man playing in front of JC Penneys. Music of any kind stops her in her little tracks. She’s mesmerized and can sit for minutes upon minutes. When it’s over, she claps. I, of course, cry. There is something in that girl that is so very wonderful.

Sunday is baptism day for Rylie Joy Mulder. We’ve confiscated the upstairs rehearsal room for an hour after the late service to have immediate family and our Torah (Bible) study up for a little ceremony welcoming her into the world and committing ourselves to do our best to raise her well. Curt and I were both baptised as infants, but the church we attend now does infant dedications, which is also a popular way to go. We’ve looked at it quite a bit over the past 2 years- this adult -vs- infant baptism thing. We decided to go old-school, back to the beginning… to the basic idea of immersion… to being clean before you come into God’s presence. It’s such a mysterious thing, and the Scriptures are amazingly silent on how and why and who but very clear about its importance. So, we thought and we talked and we studied and we decided: baptism. Immersion. Baby in the water. We’re doin’ it. It’s beautiful and I am so very excited.

I’ve gathered traditional baptism parts from the Church of England, the Catholic Rite of Baptism, the United Methodist Book of Worship, the Christian Reformed Church catechism, and a little Robert Fulghum (thanks, Wende!) to make a simple ceremony. I know it sounds complicated, but the truth is almost every church ceremony is strikingly similar- right down to the amens. We’re really not all that different from each other- except for the color of the carpet. If any of you are interested in seeing our end result or have any questions about our journey through this, I’d love to share with you.

None of this is coming out as the poetry I had imagined. It may be the wet dog sleeping on my bed at the moment. Or Post-Mall-Traumatic-Syndrome. Or that there are 42 million thousand things waiting for me to tackle in the living room- presents, chicken feed, last night’s dinner, week-old brownies.

I shall go.
And I shall go until Janury 3rd. I KNOW! It’s a long time for me, too. But I’ll be checking in on you, so leave me some good stuff to read. I just need to take a break, regroup, rest, get healthy, read some Charles D., eat ham, travel in a car with 4 family members for 28 hours… you know, Christmas vacation things.

Blessings to you and yours this Season… and a very Happy New Year. I’m air-hugging all of you right *pause* now.