I GOT BAPTISED AT 41

I Am Not Afraid, I Was Born To Do This

Jeanne d’Arc by Albert Lynch

Atheism was a religion in my household growing up.

A deep disdain and disgust for Christianity was encouraged. Whoever made the best joke about the faithful, or rolled their eyes the hardest, won. As my game is words and theatre, I won a lot of the time.

My parents were raised Christian, and being forced into young marriages that broke fast amid female “liberation” and the sexual revolution of the seventies was enough to make them sure that it was Christianity that had caused all of their major problems.

And maybe they were right… to a degree, maybe the rigidity of the religion at the time had been too much. Maybe it was bound to bust open.

So, two thousand years’ worth of wisdom was thrown in the bin in a few short years.

And then there was my generation left with no spiritual home whatsoever. And here we all are now worshipping money like it means something.

As if it means everything.

In my piece A Closet Christian Comes Out, I explain how it was existential dread over the environment and my deep love of literature and language that led me to Catholicism. And, so, for a year, I’ve been learning what this means for me in my lead up to my Baptism, communion, and confirmation last week.

To be honest, I didn’t feel fireworks. Our small church was overwhelmed with hope and humans with the visit of a Spanish Bishop. There was a lot of pomp and ceremony, and it was beautiful, but I felt a little flustered.

There was one memorable and moving moment that stuck with me. My husband whispered into my ear, I hope this brings you peace - you deserve it.

The kindest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I will not forget it.

It’s clear to me that since I attended my very first mass, up until this baptism, a transformation has certainly taken place.

Someone asked me what it’s like to be a Christian.

“I’m brave now,” I replied.

“I’ve lived a life in fear, consciously and unconsciously scared of everything. Now, I’m brave with God.”

I was baptised on May 30th. The day of Saint Joan.

“I’m not afraid, I was born to do this.”

So even as that same day, there was harrowing vandalism in France and Saint Joan’s statue was defaced by people who have no understanding or respect for her story, French culture, or Christianity…I am not afraid, I was born to do this.

And it’s taken me 41 years and a long journey to be able to say this with great confidence, and this is why this former atheist now believes that bringing a healthy relationship with God back to secular society is so important.

We can laugh and scoff and ridicule the Woke, I often do, utterly perplexed by the madness, but these humans are living in fear. And telling them that fear is wrong or stupid never made anyone feel safe.

Only God can truly heal a human.

I called my dad two days ago, and he was in an ocean of grief. Three years since my mother passed, there are days when out of nowhere a wave of helplessness will hit and wipe him out completely. I don’t know that there is anything in this life to cure this, but he did say, “I wish I had a place to go and just cry. A place to go where other people are feeling this.”

There is a place, I thought. It’s there, right in front of us.

I met my husband a few months before his mother died. So I never met her, but I was there the year after she left. With his Catholic faith and positive outlook, he took it well, even though she was, at 60, very young to die. Sometimes, though, he might be walking in the street, and a smack of grief would take him down. “I need a church,” he would say in such moments. As I was an atheist at the time, it struck me. He’s calling for a church like someone might call for a hospital. He has a place to help him heal these kinds of wounds. I don’t.

Now I do.

So, there have been no fireworks for me with this baptism, but a softening into something that has been there the whole time.

Life will always be angry, and loud, and chaotic, and nonsensical.

It will be unfair sometimes and impossibly dark at others.

I know how it goes.

But I am not afraid…I was born to do this.

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