repentance

It's been an interesting time in our home spiritually since we brought home our new baby daughter. The dynamics have definitely changed and not all good. We've found ourselves getting so short tempered and yelling a lot at the older kids, who seem to have increased their energy and mischieviousness tenfold since the birth. Most of it is AO#1, since #2 mostly just follows his lead.

Lately AO#1 has been deciding that he wants to be baptized. In our growing up, that was the pinnacle of conversion, but it wasn't really allowed or favored until you were a teenager. As a kid, this frustrated me. I wanted to be baptized at about age 5, but my parents wouldn't let me saying I was too young and didn't understand. The result was that I was like Pharoah- hardening my heart, so that when I did get older and they started to bring it up, I resisted. We heard a speaker question this CoC and baptist practice of not allowing children to be baptized when they asked. She spoke of how the child is under law (like the old covenant)- obey or be punished, but that once conversion occurs, the Holy Spirit is there more personally in the child's life and that you can work better together as parent and child towards peace, harmony and righteousness. That made a lot of sense to me. Why would I only really know the Lover as I'm a few years from adulthood, about to leave home, when we could have been growing together so much more in tune since I was much younger?

So we have been listening attentively and asking the Lover for discernment. We have prayed through the years that AO#1 would give his life to the Lover at an early age and never lose his childlike faith, but become a mature adult with the faith of a child, growing in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. Now what we are seeing is the battle. He is acting more and more in his flesh even as he feels the pull to give his life and heart to the Lover. (The thing holding him back right now is that he is scared to go under the water- we told him that when it is time, the Lover will give him courage to go under the water). Last night he told me "Jesus told me to get baptized". When I asked about the water, he said he wasn't ready tonight. So I think this inner battle is a part of the acting out going on. Of course part of it is also likely wanting attention as the baby needs lots of time and effort too.

We also take communion together as a family and AO#1 has been asking for several days to take it together. So this morning, we confessed together our wrongdoing of yelling and getting frustrated and asked the Lover for His peace over all of us and for Him to direct our paths, hearts, individually and as a family. It was a good time of repentance and grace, of sharing in the cross.