Baby Dedication

This past weekend was one of the two weekends of the year devoted to baby dedications at our church. In the month leading up to it parents of little ones who are interested in taking part in this weekend take a class to learn what our church believes in regards to baby dedication. For those of you not familiar, a baby dedication is a ceremony in which believing parents, and sometimes entire families, make a commitment before the Lord to submit a child to God's will and to raise that child according to God's Word and God's ways. This is not the same as baby baptism, a practice we don't believe in as we think it is a personal choice to be baptized and something a child should do willingly at an age of consent.

Having taken part in the class and agreed to our church's beliefs about baby dedication we made the decision to not only dedicate Isaiah, but also Nathan and Jordan as we were not members of a church when they were born. Sunday morning we got them all dressed up and waited for the family who was going to be attending to show up at our house.

This was the first time the boys had been in service with us as they are normally in their individual kids classrooms so we were a little apprehensive of how they would do. Jordan wasn't thrilled to be missing out on his class so he was not as cooperative as we would like (shocker!) but Nathan loved worship and was clapping and dancing to the music. Before we knew it it was time to go up on the stage. There were two other families, both with baby girls named Sophia, and we all waited as our pastor shared with the congregation the importance of what we were committing to. He then asked us if we were committed to God, to our marriage and to raising our child(ren) in a godly way. He also asked the church to do their part in praying for us and walking along side us as we take on this mission.

The boys did great on stage, Nathan was funny because he kept watching himself on the big screen and making all these funny movements to see if the boy on the screen would follow. It was awesome having Jeremy's family there with us and while I missed my family I knew they were all there in spirit. We feel so blessed to have all of these people supporting us as we commit to raising our sons to be men of God. It is such a huge responsibility and I am comforted knowing we are not going it alone. I am excited to take this journey, I know it will not all be easy but I believe God's promise in Proverbs 22:6, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."