On March 1, 2015, Justin and I had Garrett baptized at our church. The service was done by our sweet Associate Pastor, Don Cross. Don means so much to our family. He married me and Justin, he was at the hospital when I was laboring and delivering Carter, he baptized Carter on April 29, 2012, he took me to the Holy Land with our church in February/March 2014 and baptized me in the Jordan River, he was there when I was laboring and delivering Garrett and now he has also baptized Garrett. Needless to say, he and his wife are basically my boys third set of grandparents.
What was so special about Garrett’s baptism was the circumstances behind it. Let me rewind to a little over a year ago when Justin and I found out we were pregnant with baby #2 in November 2013. We were really excited, but unfortunately, that pregnancy was ectopic and we lost the baby around 6 weeks. I was devastated. But I never lost faith. I knew God had a plan for our family and waited patiently extremely anxiously for it to be revealed to me. It took over a month for the termination process to be complete but once it was we were told to wait another month before trying again, which we did. Lucky for us, we were able to get pregnant again right afterwards. I found out I was pregnant just days before heading to Israel with the church. After coming off a loss, I was beyond reluctant to tell anyone I was pregnant. It was extremely difficult to keep it to myself in Israel, particularly because I was with my in-laws, but I did. Don baptized me and several others in the Jordan River in the exact spot where John baptized Jesus. Again, he had no idea that I was pregnant at the time, but I did. And the uniqueness of the situation was overwhelming for me. I knew that when I went into that water, that Garrett was inside me, that we were getting baptized together. I spent that entire trip praying that God would let this baby stick and that he/she would join us as planned in October.
Fast forward to when we had the ultrasound and heard a heartbeat. We came to my in-laws house to pick up Carter (they kept him while we went to the doctor) and we called Don and Ina to tell them the news. I got them on speakerphone and said “Don remember when you baptized me in the river?” He said “yes” then I said “well, technically you baptized two of us”. Not sure what all was said after that….Ina was screaming a lot.
Fast forward almost a year and I’m planning Garrett’s baptism. I of course wanted Don to perform the service and since he’s usually our contemporary pastor, I had to pick the dates that he was already doing the traditional service, which narrowed down my options significantly. It was either March 1st, March 15th or mid-April. March 15th was out because my mom had to work that day. April was out because I had already gotten Garrett’s baptism romper in and it fit perfectly so if we had to wait until April, he would likely have outgrown it. So it had to be March 1st. We invited friends and family, planned for a lunch at our house afterwards and Ina (Don’s wife) even saved some Jordan River water from our trip and boiled it to sanitize it so that we could use it for his baptism to commemorate the fact that he was technically baptized in the Jordan once already.
On the way to church Sunday morning, the morning of the baptism, I look at my timehop app (if you’re not familiar with this let me explain real quick-this app links to your social media accounts and shows you what you posted on that exact date in the past several years) and low and behold, I see the picture of Don and my father-in-law baptizing me in the river.
My heart just sank. How could it be possible that I had planned my son’s baptism and not even realized that it was on the anniversary of my own baptism in the Jordan??? I was floored. Naturally, Don already knew it was one year, but I guess I just didn’t realize it. Before he called us up to perform the baptism, he told the congregation the story that I told above. It made the baptism so special for me. HUGE thanks to my friend Tiffany that took a video of it for me so that I could always have it. In case you’re interested in watching the video, click here. For some reason I can’t get the video to post directly on this page like I used to be able to do, which is extremely frustrating, so all I can do now is post the link for you to go to if you’re interested.
Here’s several pictures from the big day!
**I’m fairly certain that I’m making faces in the above picture to keep Garrett from crying**
Love this picture of Don carrying Garrett around the church so that his new church family could get a closer look at him….though you could see those Michelin thighs from a mile away!!!!!
The Morris Family!!
The Smith Family (my sister and her family)
Gigi (my mom) 
Don and Ina
Nana and Papa (Justin’s parents)
The Rogers Family – my grandfather, dad, aunt, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, niece and cousins.
Just Garrett with mommy and daddy
Morris family one more time.
And of course I had to take a picture with my baby next to this banner!
The yummy cake from Edgar’s Bakery that we ate after lunch!
Of course the kids needed a more “fun” dessert ;)
Excited about those blue cupcakes!!
I wish I had taken more photos of our friends and family at the house after the service, but I was just too caught up in talking to people and enjoying their company so I didn’t take many at all! Regardless, it was an amazing day and one that I will always remember.
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