As I try to process everything that has happened over the past few days and what it means to be confirmed, I’m just now realizing something amazing:
I’m an Episcopalian.
I have an identity.
I have a church.
Over the years, it’s been a little embarrassing to tell people in one breath that I was Christian, but in the next breath tell them that I didn’t go to church, that I didn’t even have a church that I was affiliated with. The best I could do was say that I was raised Catholic which made me a lapsed Catholic which wasn’t necessarily a good thing either.
But now God has stopped my wandering. He has given me a new home and a new family.
Initially, when I found out that our friends and family could be with us while we were being confirmed or received or reaffirmed, I was terrified. I was so nervous already. Even though I was so happy my friends and family were there, the thought of having them up there with me during confirmation almost pushed me over the edge. I’m just too shy. I never want to draw attention to myself.
Marty saw the look on my face and joked “when Kendra goes up, the entire church should come up and lay their hands on her.”
During the bishop’s sermon on Sunday, right before I was to be confirmed, I sat there praying to God. I told Him that I didn’t mind kneeling before the bishop alone. I had told my friends and family to please stay seated.
But I also told Him, whispering to Him in my mind, that there were a few people whose presence up there with me would not make me nervous, but would actually fill me with peace. I hadn’t discussed it with them prior, but I left it in God’s hands.
And sure enough, as soon as I kneeled down, those people were there, putting their hands on my back. It was just one of the things that made me cry.
Because I chose Hope … but Hope also chose me.
Marty had joked about the entire congregation laying hands on me, but in those three people, Lorraine, Judy and Robin, the entire church did lay hands on me.
Those three people who stood with me represented an entire congregation that through the spirit of God has welcomed me, nurtured me, healed me and adopted me as one of their own.
God, with His glorious sense of humor, took someone who was so afraid of drawing attention to herself and filled her with so much joy and so much love, that when she knelt before the bishop she couldn’t stop crying.
All the things that had led me to this point, all the ways God had moved and shaped my life, came rushing over me in an instant as I was adopted into a new family and given a new name.
Kendra
Episcopalian
Member of Hope Episcopal Church
