Time flies when you're having fun

Eighteen years ago today I was baptized - I can't believe it's been that long. On this anniversary I should be more of an adult, spiritually, don't you think? Able to vote and purchase tobacco products? I am actually not sure I've made that much progress in this journey, but I suppose the point is to keep trying.

I was raised in a non-churchgoing family with ostensibly strong small-town America Judeo-Christian values. Even though my parents had given up on the religion (Protestant Christianity, but different denominations) of their youth long before I was born, they sent me off to Sunday School at the Methodist church near our home. They encouraged me to sing in the children's choir and go to Vacation Bible School in the summer. One year at VBS, one of the adults asked me if I was baptized and reacted with something akin to horror to hear that I wasn't. At that point, a seed was planted in my mind - I wanted to find out what this baptism thing was all about. And I knew that someday I wanted to be baptized if only so no one would react in horror at the fact that I wasn't.

When I was in 4th grade, I decided I wanted to be Jewish. There were no synagogues in my small town - as far as I knew, I didn't know any Jewish people. But it seemed like such an orderly religion. I was drawn to the rules and rituals that could help bring order to the chaos of my life. But even then, at age 10, I remember thinking: "I can't be Jewish because I can't give up Jesus Christ."

Four years later, the wife of the local Episcopal priest asked if I'd be interested in a babysitting gig - watching the children in the church nursery on Sunday mornings. I accepted and thoroughly enjoyed my new assignment. Over the next 2 years, I was exposed to something I didn't know existed - liturgical Christianity. My heart soared - this is what I had been searching for all along (I thought) - I could have ritual AND Christ. In the summer of 1987, with the reluctant permission of my parents, I took catechism classes and was baptized and confirmed by the bishop during his parochial visit on Septmber 7th. I became very active in youth ministries in the Diocese and was the youngest person to be named a lay reader/chalice bearer in the state.

Since those days I've realized that the liturgy and ritual of the Episcopal/Anglican tradition were only shades of the depth for which my heart yearned. My husband and I met in an Episcopal Church when I was in college, so I can see God's plan in the path I've travelled, but soon after we were married we realized that we were disenchanted with the direction the Episcopal Church was going spiritually. We floundered, unchurched, for a while until we decided to try out a local Orthodox church that worshipped using a form familiar to us - the Liturgy of St. Tikhon. This liturgy was based on the traditional Anglican worship found in the 1928 (and earlier) Book of Common Prayer. The Western Rite was accessible to us and fully Orthodox at the same time. We had found the depth our hearts longed for and felt like we had truly "come home." We were chrismated in December of 1995 - a sacrament joining us to the Orthodox Church and usually considered to be the "completion" of Holy Baptism. Hmmm... maybe I should count from that date and give myself a little more time to become a spiritual "adult."