Getting Lily Ready for Baptism Took Longer Than the Interview

Lily stood in two inches of lukewarm bathwater on the Thursday after her birthday, wearing swim goggles and a pink clothespin on her nose, and announced that she was ready. The clothespin was hers. I'd have gone with my own fingers, but she'd been planning this since breakfast and I wasn't going to argue with a girl who had that much equipment.

She had turned eight five days earlier and her baptism was set for the 27th, and for about a week she'd found somewhere else to be whenever anyone said the word font. I assumed the hard part would be the doctrine, since I taught third grade for five years and explaining a promise to a child is most of that job. It turns out the doctrine was the easy part, and the water took most of June.

How do you explain the baptismal covenant to a child?

We sat on the couch with the back of an electric bill envelope and drew a line down the middle. Her promises went on the left: take Jesus's name on her, remember him, keep his commandments. What Heavenly Father promises went on the right: forgiveness when she repents, the Holy Ghost and living with him again someday. Lily studied the two columns and pointed out that the right side was longer, which it was.

Taking his name took longer. She wanted to know how a person takes a name that isn't hers, and I said it's like the farmers' market, when somebody tells you that you must be one of the Whitaker kids and you're carrying us around whether you meant to or not. "So I have to be good at the farmers' market," she said. Close enough.

"Always remember him" she took literally. I said maybe not every second of the shower, and then I read her what Alma says to the people at the waters of Mormon, because he puts it better than I can.

"...are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort..."

Mosiah 18:8-9

Lily said mourn means sad. I told her it also means sitting beside somebody who's sad when you'd rather be outside, which got me a long look and the observation that Caleb never does that.

Caleb, from the other couch, said he did once.

I left one thing out on purpose, and that was telling her the water would wash her clean. She's eight and the Church teaches that little children are innocent before God, so I didn't want her believing she'd be spotless for a week and then coming apart over the first sharp word to her brother.

What do you say when she asks what the Holy Ghost feels like?

Somewhere around the Costco exit in the Odyssey she asked, "Will I hear him?" She meant the way Biscuit hears his name from two rooms away. I gave her what Elder Oaks said, that "Inspiration comes more as a feeling than as a sound," and she asked what kind of feeling, which was the right question and the one I answered badly.

I grew up in St. George believing it was supposed to be a burning in the chest. I waited for it through most of my teens and decided its absence meant his, and I think now that mine was simply quiet and I kept listening for loud. I didn't want to hand Lily my version, so I gave her Joseph Smith instead: "If He comes to a little child, He will adapt himself to the language and capacity of a little child."

Then she gave me hers.

In May she had cracked the shade on the hall lamp, galloping through the house on the stick horse she's too old for and won't admit it, and she hid the crack for two days. When she finally told me at bedtime, with her face in Biscuit's neck, she lay there a minute and said, "My chest got quiet." I wrote it on the grocery notepad on the fridge that night because I knew I'd want it later. I told her that counts, and I'd have missed it entirely if I'd been waiting for a burning.

What if she's afraid of the water?

I'd guessed she was afraid of drowning, but it took me a week to get out of her that what frightened her was being tipped. At five she'd had one bad swim lesson where an instructor laid her flat on her back without warning and she came up coughing, and she remembered every second of it. Before I knew that I told her there was nothing to be scared of three separate times, and she got quieter each time, so I stopped.

The Saturday before, we sat third row at a ward baptism for a boy a few years older than Lily, and she watched with her hands in her lap and counted under her breath. "That was four seconds," she told me afterward, sounding almost offended that it was so short. That one count did more than anything I'd said.

Then David took her out to the shop on a Thursday after work. In her socks, on a garage floor with sawdust sticking to them, he showed her the hold: her wrist in his hand, her other hand on his forearm, his free hand flat between her shoulder blades. He had her lean back against it until she trusted it, and he told her that if anything slipped he would just say the words again. On the 27th her heel came up and he did say them again, and she nodded at him from the water like a foreman. I was in the third row crying into a church bulletin.

The bathtub is where we started, though, and it went in stages I'd never have planned: one second with goggles and then three without, then me counting out loud from the edge of the tub while she held the clothespin in one hand like a microphone and decided each night whether she'd use it. By the Sunday before the baptism it had retired to the junk drawer. The night before, David gave her a blessing on the edge of her bed with Biscuit sitting on my feet, and she was asleep before he'd finished the amen. I'll take it.

Caleb, for the record, asked only whether the water would be cold. It was, and he told the whole congregation so.

What did the interview leave out?

The bishop talked with Lily for maybe nine minutes, and I'd braced for a quiz that never came. She walked out reporting that he'd asked what the Holy Ghost does and she'd said he's a friend who tells you true things, and I'd have paid money for that line. What it showed me is how little of the preparation happens in that room, because the covenant talk and the car ride and the lampshade and the garage floor all took place in the three weeks around it.

What I still wonder about is this: eight-year-olds give the right answers, Lily gave me every one of them on that couch, and I can't tell how much she understood and how much she'd soaked up from me and the Primary songs. The Sunday after, the sacrament tray came down our pew and she took the bread and looked at her own hand for a second, as if checking it. I don't know what that was. I decided not to ask.

What comes after is mostly a long messy middle, with bread on Sundays and a fair amount of apologizing in between.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are children baptized at eight?

The revelation says a person has to have reached the years of accountability and be "capable of repentance," and the Church teaches that comes by eight. Before then children are innocent and don't need baptism. At eight they can make a real choice and a real promise.

What if my child can't explain their testimony yet?

Most eight-year-olds can't, and nobody should be asking for a speech. Lily's was "my chest got quiet." What you're looking for is willingness to follow Jesus and keep the promise, and the testimony grows after.

What if my child makes a mistake after being baptized?

Probably by the next afternoon. Baptism starts the covenant and doesn't finish anyone, and the sacrament each week is where they renew it and begin again. Say that out loud before they need it, since a child who thinks the water made them perfect will panic at the first slip.

What helps a child who's afraid of the water?

Let them watch a baptism so they can see how short it is. Practice getting their face wet in the bathtub, have the person baptizing show them the hold on dry ground, and tell them they can pinch their nose. A priesthood blessing the night before is worth asking for too.

The lampshade in our hall is still cracked. I haven't fixed it and she hasn't asked me to.

with love, Melissa