Water is a good theme this week. :-)

Yeah!! Now I can feel like I'm in a fishbowl when you read this!! Haha! I am so excited to change the look of this blog - (Thanks Theresa! ) but in the process I cut my picture in half, and I guess after that completely off. It took me two weeks to figure out how to put a picture on in the first place! So just look at the fish.....

These last few weeks have been busy, challenging, and messy. I don't like to write when I feel like my life is messy, ... and life is often messy, hence the long gaps. It's still messy tonight, but I am a recovering perfectionist, so this is therapy. :-)

Of most significance this week was my husband's decision to be baptized Sunday.
(Julia told him later that night that she was so proud of him. - Because he went underwater! That takes on new meaning when it was the very thing you feared about swimming lessons all summer!!!)

For many, I'm sure, this was a surprising event. I certainly know he didn't wake up Sunday morning with that on his "to do" list either. I can remember the first discussion about some of his thoughts & doubts surrounding about his baptism as a young person occured even before we were married. There haven't been many discussions about it, maybe 5 or 6 "mental wrestlings" about it over the last 10 years, but nevertheless, it has always been there.
Jason shared later that God used the bible class that morning to prepare him and deal with his pride, and the sermon to deal with him directly over this long struggle - every argument he presented was answered by God's Spirit, all the way around. When the lesson was over, he was already in tears, and as he stood up to walk forward, he just leaned over and said "I'm done."

What victory in those words.

I don't know how to vicariously experience someone else's freedom or salvation, but I feel like that moment was the closest I've ever been, personally. The beginning of freedom is found only at the end of oneself, and that was as much at the end of himself as I have ever had the privilege of knowing Jason.

It reminded me again of how much I am my own prison guard, when my God calls me to freedom. Sometimes freedom, in its purest form, doesn't look fashionable to me. I'd prefer a nice, clean, competent look over a messy, mistaken, desperate look. The irony is that the fashionable look is just a imitation overcoat, - never the real thing, inside or out.

"I'm done."

While being cleaned and sealed and redeemed is a beautiful gift poured into us in an instance, "I'm done" is a phrase worth repeating daily in the life of every follow of Christ. To begin every single morning at the end of ourselves is to accept the invitation into true freedom and life, every day.

A special thanks to those of you who celebrated this day with us.