ON MY SOAPBOX

I spent Saturday morning at Stake baptisms, as usual.  Everything was going like it always does, then Shayla walked through the door.  Most kids walk in excited, but  nervous.  Shayla was frowning and not the least bit happy to be there.  I greeted her and her family like I do all the kids.  I knelt dowm by her and held her hand and told her how excited I was for her that she had made such an important decision to join the church.  Her poor little hand was shaking!!!

We ran through the program and unfortunately Shayla was last to be baptized.  By the time it was her turn she was in tears and had a “tummy ache”.  He parents pleaded with her for a few minutes and finally dismissed from the font out into the hall.  I watched out in the hall for a while and finally I felt prompted to go and speak with her.  By this point her parents were embarrassed and upset that their family and friends had been waiting for forty minutes!!!

I asked her what was wrong.  She told me she just couldn’t do it.  I  told her about how my twins were scared to death because they didn’t want to get water in their ears. (For those of you that don’t know my twins only have a 1/3 and a ½ of an eardrum, thanks to 2 sets of tubes and repeated ear infections).  I went and got Syd and Shelb and had them tell her how even though they didn’t want to get baptized they did, and they loved it.  She calmed down a little.  When the girls left she started crying again!

Finally I told her quite bluntly “Shayla you just have to have faith!!!  Heavenly Father isn’t going to let anything bad happen!!!  Have faith that Heavenly Father will take care of you!!!!”

She got mad at me and said “I do have faith!  I am just too scared!!!”  We said a little prayer together and  her dad picked her up and took her into the font where she cried all through the baptism.  She made it though.   Everyone was crying when her dad picked her up and carried her out of the font.  It was such a tender moment.

It made me think.  I have faith.  I know that when I do the things Heavenly Father asks me to do I will be blessed.  But sometimes I am scared too.  Making the obvious right choice isn’t always the easy thing to do.  I thought of Alma 22. One of my favorite sections of scripture.  Aaron is teaching Lamoni's father, the King about God and repentance.  He cries to the Lord “I will give away all my sins to know thee.”   Like Shayla I have faith, but just as she didn’t want to jump in over her head in the water, I have a hard time  giving up all my sins! It shouldn’t be hard, but it is.  It is just hard to go all the way under the "water"....  I struggle with making time to study my scriptures, not swearing, judging others, ect….  I understood how Shayla felt.  But she has inspired me, at least for this week, to try and do a better job of having faith, to just jump in, and knowing that the choices I make, if they are good ones, will bring me closer to my Heavenly Father, and closer to truly knowing him.