When Faith Becomes Your Own

As children, many of us are shepherded down the aisle and told,

“It’s time to join the church.”

Then comes baptism.

We go because our parents tell us it’s time.

We go because our grandparents went.

We go because this is what our families have always done.

It’s our culture.

It’s how we were raised.

But as children, how much do we really understand?

Do we truly understand what it means to be born again?

Do we understand the gift of salvation?

Do we understand what baptism represents?

I’m not sure I did.

Several years ago, I found myself wanting to rediscover that journey.

Not because someone told me it was time.

Not because it was expected of me.

But because I finally understood what it meant to me.

I wanted to make the decision for myself.

I wanted to be baptized again, this time with an understanding I didn’t have as a child.

It wasn’t about repeating something I had already done.

It was about reclaiming my faith with understanding.

And then, years later, my daughter called me.

She had been baptized as a child too—so young that she barely remembers it.

She said,

“Mom, I’ve been thinking about getting baptized.”

I had to smile.

Because here we were.

She had already been baptized.

But now she was an adult.

Now she understood what she was choosing.

Now the decision belonged to her.

And suddenly I realized something beautiful.

Maybe this isn’t really about getting baptized twice.

Maybe it’s about understanding the difference between being raised in faith and choosing faith for yourself.

There comes a time when our parents’ faith has to become our faith.

Our grandmother’s prayers become our prayers.

The church we were carried into becomes a place we choose to enter.

And the things we were taught as children become truths we begin to understand for ourselves.

That’s a different kind of growing up.

That’s when faith stops being something you simply inherited…

and becomes something you own.

Maybe that’s what God was doing all along.

Planting the seed when we were children.

Allowing others to water it with prayers, Scripture, Sunday mornings, and the examples they lived before us.

And then waiting for the day when we would recognize for ourselves what had been growing inside us all along.

Sometimes we have to go back and experience something again.

Not because the first time didn’t count.

Not because what came before was meaningless.

But because we weren’t old enough then to understand its meaning the way we do now.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because God meets us differently at every age.

The seed may be planted in childhood…

but sometimes it takes growing up to understand what has been growing inside us all along.