As I was standing stage left, in a black t-shirt with big letters, the words death, burial and resurrection scrolling across, I felt incredibly awkward, uncomfortable, unsettled. Several hundred onlookers applauded as the pastor introduced a trio of people taking the plunge in believer’s baptism. A 12-year-old boy, a 7-year old girl and me.

I wanted to do it. But as a 30-something, lifelong “Christian” I felt embarrassed. I wondered what other people were thinking. For some reason, deep inside it was important to me that they knew that I already knew God and was finally declaring my passion to truly follow Him, not that I was just finding salvation. Of course, none of that mattered. What mattered was that Satan had successfully filled my head with ridiculous lies and nonsense and noise, allowing all my familiar insecurities to dominate my attention in a moment when the focus should have been squarely on God.

I wanted to do it. But I tried my best to rationalize my way out of it when the time was drawing near.  For almost a week, I debated backing out. Not going through with it. This morning, I stayed in bed as long as I could. Dreading what was to come.

This doesn’t sound like the best way to approach being baptized. It should be a joyous, momentous occasion. For me, this act was about obedience. It was about doing it because it was the right next step for me. I needed to do it. I wanted to do it. I just wasn’t comfortable with the actual act of doing it.

I didn’t want people to think that I had just figured things out. As I discussed earlier, when I was baptized as a child, I had no full appreciation of its significance. Of grace. But was my profession of faith genuine? Was I saved then? I don’t know. Now that I really contemplate it, I really don’t know. As I play back the last several decades of my life and truly, objectively evaluate my historical heart, I really don’t know. But I know this. I am saved in Christ. Did it happen when I was 11? Did it happen just this past week? I really don’t know. But I know that it happened. I know my heart in this moment, my desire for true repentance. The change I’ve been feeling inside. The relationship I now have with God.

My favorite song recently is “Somebody I Used to Know” by Gotye. Such an awesome song. It’s become my anthem for how I feel about myself. With every passing day, I feel like I’m shedding old burdens and chains and that I’m more fully embracing who I am, and who I am to become. Understanding where I came from, who I have been. It’s like the person I was for so much of my life is quickly becoming somebody I used to know. That’s exciting to me.

I still have such a long way to go. So much to figure out.

As I sat in the tub, the pastor about to submerge me in water, I had a fleeting moment of clarity. This act of baptism was not only for me to publicly declare that I will live my life for Jesus. It was also an opportunity to proclaim my faith in allowing God to start anew with me.  As I climbed out of that tub, I no longer felt the discomfort, the worry about how people were perceiving me. Whether anyone was judging me, thinking I should have figured this out by now. Whether anyone thought I looked out of place on that stage.

In Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr writes that we, “must always be ready to see anew…to be vulnerable, to say to your soul, ‘I don’t know anything.'”

That’s what I was able to say to God and all those in attendance today. I don’t know anything.  I don’t have it figured out. I had it all wrong, for so long. But I’m ready to start again.