The Rest is Still to Come | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Rest is Still to Come | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jennifer Martin
01/21/13
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The water rushed over my head. I had braced for the cold, but the liquid was surprisingly a pleasant lukewarm. Everything disappeared behind my eyelids, as I began to relax and let my weight pull me under. Bits and pieces from my life flashed through my mind. I know that sounds cliché, but there really is no other adequate description for it. Time is suspended and little vignettes play through the recesses of your conscious, barely distinguishable one from the other.

There I was, six years old learning “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday school. There I was, a little ten-year-old playing an angel in the church Christmas play, sporting those goofy maroon snow boots I insisted on wearing. And then there’s me in my early teens walking proudly between the pews, carefully guarding the flame of the acolyte candle. I saw myself hugging my teammates when our high school soccer team won the state championship. There were gymnastics meets, track races, fun trips to the beach with friends.

There were beautiful sunsets, young love, a majestic memory of a full moon reflection glimmering on the ocean’s surface.

Then there were the college days. Nights of drinking, partying way too late. There were the times when the room was spinning and all I wanted was for it to stop. There was the time my friend had to hold my hair back after a night of boozing. Now that’s a good friend.

Then there was the endless morning spent in the Planned Parenthood waiting room. So scared. So alone. So cold. Then there were the mood swings, the self hatred. There was the failed first marriage, the depression, the string of deadbeat relationships that followed.

Yes, I was more than ready to let go. I was more than ready to leave all of the mistakes, all of the pain I had felt and caused behind me. I’m not sure you can actually feel tears roll down your face under water, but at that moment I thought I did. My soul cried out. Give me rest. I’m so weary of this world.

Whoosh.

There is no feeling like it; that moment when your face breaks the plane of the water and you draw your first breath as a new creation.

I heard the pastor’s voice through the thick fog in my head. “You are now baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

I blinked, water dripping over my eyes and off the ends of my hair. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the congregation clapping. I saw my parents beaming proudly from the back pew. I saw my husband holding my eight-month-old son, tears in his eyes.

That’s my story. The good, the bad and the very ugly. But it doesn’t end there. The rest is still to come…

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