For twenty-six years a shadow’s been haunting my rearview mirror, a cold suspicion rattling around my skull like a loose marble centered on the Mormon outfit and the day I took the plunge into their fold. I played the part for two years to appease the wife and her kin, but the divine spark never came. Not once. No spark, no warmth, no sign of the Holy Spirit. Not when I went under the water, not when the Elders performed the ‘Laying of the hands,” meant to impart salvation.. Nothing, no rush of the spirit. Just hollow ceremony and friendly smiles.
Over the years since I walked out on the Mormon church I’ve encountered the Holy Spirit countless times. I’ve written about the experience on this platform in the past… the way it has humbled me, the ego-bruising truth, the heavy debt of my sins and the sudden wash of grace underserved and unearned that left me gasping for air and weeping with praise. Like the Gospel says, it doesn’t always knock when you’re ready, rather it hits you when you least expect it; a stray conversation with a stranger in a crowd, or in those long, lonely hours in the dark when you’re staring down the barrel of despair.
I was baptized a month before fatherhood and three weeks before marriage. I loved Melissa completely but my baptism felt hollow, tainted by a heavy dose of guilt and shame. I was carrying the weight of our shared addiction. I carried the weight of a jagged childhood steeped in pain while she came from a family that wore the good life like a tailored suit, foreign and alien to a kid like me. She belonged to a world of gold-plated dreams while I walked through life in hand-me-down shoes too tight, each step a reminder of where I came from and the man I couldn’t quite be.
That baptism… it’s been a splinter in my mind for years. Not because the sentiment was fake, but because I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t come to it on my own, I was pushed. I was shoved into a creed that forgot the man behind the name. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints… a title with no soul. So today I sought out a Baptist Church. I’ve sat through plenty of sermons in this life; the holy roller Pentecostals, the church lurching evangelists, the rigid mass of liturgical Catholicism, the bland pleasantries of the Latter Day Saints, I’ve even drifted through the hollow comfort of the non-denominational crowds, but the Baptists… that’s the one that consistently resonates with my soul.
I met with the pastor and though our conversation was brief it hit hard. I told him that baptism all those years ago felt hollow. It left me wanting. I asked him if there was a need to be baptized again or if I was asking a stupid question. “No” he answered, “Your question is not stupid, you were baptized by a false church.” The Good Book says that we should be immersed in the waters after we have come to the Lord. In this way are we cleansed and forgiven of our sins allowing the seeds of faith to take root in the Good Soil. So sometime soon, in the coming days, I’ll be immersed in the waters the proper way.