There are many (necessary, and sometimes blood-pressure-elevating) hoops to jump through in order to become an elder in the UMC through the ordination process. One of the most stressful parts of this process is making sure that all appropriate paperwork is filled out at the appropriate times.

One of the first sets of paperwork I ever had to do needed me to state when I was baptized. I didn't remember it, so I assumed that I was baptized as a baby because the UMC believes in infant baptism. When I called my mom to ask her about it, she told me that actually wasn't the case.

Turns out my sister and I were baptized together. She was a newborn, so I was probably 4 or a fresh 5. As she began to tell the me about the day we were baptized, one tiny, blurry piece of the day returned to my memory before she could get to that part of the story. After the baptisms had taken place, our pastor at the time took my sister in one arm and took my hand with his free one, and he walked us around the sanctuary.

What a weird thing to remember.

I actually preached on baptism and calling this past Sunday, and I was really struggling. It had been a long, hectic week at school, and before I knew it, the end of the week had snuck up on me only at the beginning stages of my sermon. I had stretched my brain and my resources, and nothing was coming together. Nothing was making sense.

My husband took me out to dinner and a movie to escape the stress, but it lingered around in my mind for most of the evening as much as I tried to suppress the anxiety about how it was all going to come together. As we drove home that night, as I often do when I get stuck on a paper/project/sermon/real-life situation, I began to spill aaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllll my thoughts about baptism that I had up until that point and what'd'ya know? Mine and my sister's baptisms popped into my head.

As I began to vocally flesh out what I thought baptism meant and think about that through the lens of our baptisms, it became blatantly apparent to me how our calling was nurtured and encouraged and supported by our church family who renewed their baptismal covenants that day, promising to raise us in the faith. I was not only promised in my baptism that I would never go it alone from the standpoint that Jesus would always be with me, but my church family and the greater Universal Church would also always be with me.

Not to mention my sister.

As we've gotten older, we've gotten progressively closer. Turns out we've ended up having a lot more in common than we originally thought back in the day when we spent the majority of our time together yelling and throwing things at each other.

We were baptized on the same day. We were given our call on the same day. From that time forward, we've continuously grown closer to one another, but also closer to God thanks to the support of our parents and our church families who made a promise that day to always help us advance in relationship with God.

I'd never stopped to consider the close bond I have with my sister today was in any way shaped by our joint baptisms years ago, but now I really think it played a part. Not only are we both working toward similar vocations, but we also help one another understand a little more about God the more we have opportunity to reflect on those things...together.

We not only joined the Body of Christ that day, but we were initiated into our own little community--a safe space that presented itself as we got old enough to recognize it, a place where God is at the center when we are intentional, a place where we grow in our understanding of God and how we're supposed to live out each of our respective callings in light of our initial call to join Christ in ministry to all the world.

It's a place I love to go, love to be fully present. A place where we laugh, cut up, say stupid things, voice our frustrations, spill our heartaches all over the other one, all while unconditionally loving each other (as much as humans can do that sort of thing), and encouraging each other to press forward in what we feel like we've been called to do though it is sometimes painful.

I think my takeaway from this realization about our baptisms is that I hope to work harder at creating more Christ-centered relationships--ones where I'm not scared to talk about my faith, where I can authentically encourage others to talk about theirs, where we can ask questions, where we truly seek to have the love of God at the center as a means to better understand what it means to live out our calling in the world as we were first given at our baptisms.