A year ago today, we joined our beloved church and my babies were baptized. I wanted so much to write about it then, but I was absolutely wordless which is a frustrating thing for someone who tends to feel out the size and shape of something by painting it in words. It was just too much, too big, too precious to wrap words around. In some ways it still is, because so much of our faith is inextricable from mystery. Our human words just can’t hold it all, and neither can we. God is just bigger. Bigger than our faith statements and position papers and apologetics. Bigger than the boxes we love to keep things in. Bigger than who is in and who is out. Bigger than any of it. Our best, most successful attempts to explain and understand and capture can only grab a fistful or two of infinity. That’s all we can hold, but somehow it holds us. And as maddening as those wordless moments are for me, they are also an incredible gift because for a little while I feel totally unmoored in the fathomless sea of God’s love and mercy; I cannot feel the bottom or see the shores, I cannot come up for air. How wide and high and long and deep is the love of Christ? It surpasses knowledge. It defies my little words. It is more than our hearts can hold. Is there a better day to feel all of that than the day your babies are baptized?

So today I am remembering that; that on the day that my babies were baptized there were no words to hold it all. There was just water and love and unmerited grace and open-armed community and joyful promises and gentle hands and God’s overwhelming and unconditional YES; a yes that resounds forever, for always, for all of us; a defiant, glorious mystery that we will never get our arms all the way around. Thanks be to God.