Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  We pushed the pasta around our plates in silence for a while, and then my dad asked me, “What does it mean, to be baptized?”

  Surprised, I told him that baptism meant turning my life over to God, it meant committing 100 percent to Him and to a life I didn’t have to be ashamed of. I told him how important it was to me to take this final step. He nodded, as if absorbing what I’d told him. Then he asked another question, and then another, as if he was testing me. What did baptism mean in the Bible? Why had I waited so long? Would it change the way I lived?

  I answered his questions as best I could, thrilled he was engaging with me on the topic at all. It was clear he wasn’t thrilled about it, but neither was he directly challenging my decision. It was more than I’d hoped for but less than I’d dreamed of. Was it completely unrealistic to hope for his support?

  I’d been talking to my mother about baptism the two years I’d been thinking and praying and searching. She’d deliberately taken a neutral position. Better than anyone, she understood that I didn’t want to upset my father; by the same token, she could see how much making the commitment was beginning to mean to me.

  She’d understood how important it was for me to make the decision to be baptized on my own, with no interference or outside influence. So during our many conversations about my desire to take this final step, my mom mostly asked questions and listened to my answers. The only advice she gave me was to keep praying about it. “Keep talking to God,” she told me. “He’ll make the answer clear.” It was good advice. I had, and He had.

  A lot of those conversations with my mom took place in the front seat of her car. Every Sunday, she drives over to my house and picks me up so we can take her car to church. After the drive home, we sit in my driveway—often for an hour or more—and talk. The conversation is free-ranging, covering everything from what we’re going to wear for the holidays to the big-picture issues of life and love and faith. Some of our best conversations have happened in the front seat of that car, so it felt fitting that it was where I finally told my mom that I’d made the decision: I was going to be baptized at Water of Life.

  There’s a mandatory class that you have to take in order to be baptized at Water of Life. I’d registered already, and the class was starting soon. And I was nursing a secret, private hope that my mom would join me.

  I’d gone online to register for the class, and one of the questions on the registration form was “Is this the first time you have been baptized, or are you having a rebaptism?” Underneath, it explained that a rebaptism is for those who had been baptized before but who had stopped living a Christian life for one reason or another. When those people came back to church and felt that they wanted to give their lives back to God, they could be rebaptized.

  The paragraph couldn’t have jumped out at me more if it had been surrounded by blinking lights. My mom had been baptized as a young girl. But she had spent the majority of her adult life living away from the church. As soon as I read the question about rebaptism, I knew that it described my mom’s situation exactly.

  In the time that we’d been going to church, my mom had her faith restored to her, as she put it. It made me think of a beautiful old piece of furniture, broken and forgotten in the back of someone’s garage, dried out and covered with layers of grime and dust, until finally someone comes along who can recognize how beautiful the piece is, someone willing to invest the labor and patience to make it whole again. The next time you see it, that piece of furniture has been transformed by love. It’s sturdy again, polished to a gleam with beeswax, and restored to its former glory.

  I had that idea of restoration in my head when I told my mom about my decision to be baptized, and I asked her if she’d consider doing it with me.

  “Mom,” I started, not sure what she’d think. “I’m going to take the class. And I’d really love you to come, too.”

  Then I explained everything I’d learned about rebaptism, and how perfectly I felt it described her own situation. She was incredibly excited about the opportunity and quickly said yes. My mom wanted a new life, too, and to celebrate the restoration of her faith. She hadn’t realized it was an option, either.

  She only had one hesitation: She didn’t want to horn in on my big day.

  “I know how enormous a step this is for you, Alisa,” she told me. “Don’t you want the attention to be on you?”

  I told her the truth, which was that I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than sharing my day with her. We hugged and cried a little, and both agreed that I’d sign her up for the class, too. I was thrilled we’d be doing it together.

  A week later, after dinner at their house, we were all watching TV together, and I paused the show. “Dad, I’m getting baptized next week, and I hope you’ll be there. I completely understand if you don’t feel you want to attend, and I promise I won’t be mad if you decide not to. But if you could be there, it would mean the world to me.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, but just sat there in his recliner with his hands pressed together, his toes tapping together the way they do when he’s mad. We sat there in silence, my own hands pressed into my lap so I didn’t have to see them shake.

  Finally he said, “I’ve always supported you in something positive, Alisa.” It was true—he had. “I may not like this, but I’ve always loved you. I’ll be there.”

  I couldn’t contain myself—first I started crying, and then I jumped onto his lap.

  In the week leading up to my baptism, I was a little kid waiting for Christmas.

  Unfortunately, the day would not turn out to be everything I had expected.

  Not at all, in fact.

  The morning got off to a bad start. I overslept, and so I had to rush through my morning routine to get to the church on time. I like my personal appearance to be just so, and I wasn’t thrilled with having to throw myself together in a rush on one of the most important days of my life.

  I noticed how chilly it was as soon as I opened the door to my house, but of course it was too late to change. “I’ll stand in the sun,” I thought, rubbing my arms for warmth. I’m a California girl, used to 75 degrees and sunny. And in Southern California, 75 degrees and sunny is almost always what you get.

  Not the day of my baptism. By the time we got to the shallow pool where the baptism would take place, it wasn’t cold—it was freezing. My mom had had the foresight to grab a cardigan, but I was in a short-sleeved dress and openly shivering. The sky was overcast, so there was no sun to stand in. The cold was one thing, but it was made drastically worse by a gale-force wind, the kind of wind you have to put your head down and brace yourself to walk into. The palm trees near the baptism pool were bending over so dramatically, I was worried they were going to break in half.

  I was pleased to see that my dad was there in the audience, but there was very little warmth coming off him. In fact, I could see that he was in a full-on bad mood—what my mom and I called crankypants mode. Watching him in the crowd and seeing that sour look on his face reminded me of myself the first night at the retreat in the mountains. I pitied whomever he was standing next to.

  The wind was so bad that the guys manning the snack bar tent near the pool packed up their wares and went inside. They were so desperate to get inside that they gave away everything they’d been selling. My dad scored two free donuts, which was probably the best thing that happened to him that whole day.

  That wind meant we couldn’t hear a thing the pastor was saying; the words got ripped right out of the pastor’s mouth as soon as he opened it. It also meant that the videographer had to go inside.

  That there would be no video was especially upsetting to me. It might sound silly, but I was looking forward to having pictures and video of the day. I’m not envious of very many physical possessions, but I really do covet the photographs I see in my friends’ homes. My best friend, Katie, has a side table in her living room that’s covered in framed snapshots. Some of them are from milestone celebrations, li
ke her high school graduation or her sister’s wedding, but mostly they’re candids taken on ordinary, happy days: in the pool with her niece in her floaties, or wearing a big smile and a jokey apron that matches her dad’s at a Father’s Day barbecue.

  It breaks my heart to look at those photographs, because our family doesn’t have a lot of them. There are tons of them from when I was a kid—in a bathing suit at the cabin by a lake in the woods where my parents used to take us, at my grandmother’s house for Christmas, in my Girl Scout uniform. There are shots of me with my dad at Universal Studios, and me dressed to the nines with my mom before my cousin’s wedding. There are pictures of me and my brother dressed up at Halloween, and ones from all the times as a little girl that I’d raid my mom’s closet for makeup and heels.

  And then they stop.

  In a way, I’m not sorry—I don’t think I could stand to see the way I looked back when I was doing drugs, and I certainly wouldn’t want to display a photograph of myself from that time. But it makes me sad that there aren’t more pictures of me blowing out birthday candles or hugging my mom in front of my grandma’s Christmas tree. It’s also made me super-careful to document those happy occasions now; my family can hardly eat a regular weeknight dinner together without me jumping up to get a picture.

  So I was devastated to learn that there wouldn’t be any official pictures or video of one of the most important steps of my life. My mom had brought a camera, and she gave it to my dad so he could take pictures. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to use it. So there are no pictures at all, even amateur ones, of my baptism.

  There we were by the side of that pool, freezing and unable to hear what the pastor was saying. I tried to concentrate on joy, on God’s love, on what this day meant, but my nerves and physical discomfort were a constant distraction, as was my anxiety about what my father was thinking.

  My mom went first so that she could be one of the attendants when it was my turn to be immersed. Honestly, at the time of my immersion, I didn’t feel anything except the incredible, shocking coldness of the water. Afterward, I found myself standing by the side of the pool, shivering like a dog.

  Then, right after it was over, my dad waved goodbye to us and sped off. He’d been there, but he hadn’t really been there. That feeling intensified when we were buttonholed by a man who’d seen his wife and daughter baptized that morning. His pride in his own family and the warmth of his congratulations for us stood in stark contrast to the way my own father had reacted. That stranger couldn’t have been more lovely to us, but his excitement on our behalf did very little to lift my mood.

  I was wet, freezing cold, and disappointed. My mom and I hustled inside to a bathroom to dry off and get warm, and as soon I was alone, I found myself fighting back tears. The whole event had been an incredible letdown.

  I closed the door behind me and realized how scared I was. Then I started to pray. As I was detailing everything about the day that had been such a bitter disappointment, the enormity of what had taken place hit me. Of course it hadn’t been easy or perfect, the way that I’d planned. What in my life had been? Coming to faith hadn’t been easy or a perfect process, but I could clearly see that it was the best thing that I’d ever done. Forgiving my assailants hadn’t been seamless either, but wrestling with that concept had been one of the most productive steps I’d taken toward moving my life forward. What good thing had ever been easy?

  Maybe my father hadn’t been effusive about my big day, but he’d shown up and supported us. And I had been baptized! I had been reborn into God’s love. I was walking with Him now. And, meaningfully, my mother had been right by my side when I had been immersed. The idea that I had been reborn in her arms, just as I had been placed into them after my physical birth, brought me to tears of awe and gratitude, replacing the self-pitying sniveling of a minute before.

  I stood there in the bathroom, bathed in this feeling of complete gratitude. I had everything I needed. I had my faith, a God who knew me and loved me, who believed that I was perfect and who forgave me when I was not. I had a loving, supportive family—a mother who could join me in my faith and a dad who would support me even if he didn’t entirely understand.

  I didn’t need pictures or a video, or a gloriously sunny Southern California day. I didn’t need anything more than I had, which was a lot.

  About a month after the ceremony, my baptism certificate arrived in the mail. When I looked at the date printed there, I felt a little ding of recognition in my head, but I couldn’t say why. Later, I was having dinner at my parents’ house. As I was helping my mom set the table, I asked her if she’d gotten her baptism certificate yet.

  “It was weird,” I told her. “When I opened mine, the date rang a bell. It seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it. February twenty-fourth. Is that someone’s birthday or something?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “No, but it should have been yours.”

  I was confused. “What do you mean? I was born January fifth.”

  “You were premature, remember? Your dad always says you couldn’t wait to get out, to take on the world.” The enormity of what she was saying began to dawn on me, and the smile that crossed her face lit up the whole room. “That date was the first thing I noticed when I opened my own baptism certificate,” she said. “February twenty-fourth was your original due date, Alisa.”

  After my baptism, there was a startling development in my relationship with my father: The tension eased up.

  He’d been furiously grumpy, standing by the shallow pool for the ceremony. Afterward, he hadn’t said a word to me about it. But I do think that seeing me take that step had been as transformative for him as it had been for me.

  I think he’d come to understand why it had felt so important to me to make that commitment, and it had exposed him to the depth and intensity of my faith. It helped him to see that my decision wasn’t personal or a betrayal of him or our family. I believe he finally understood what I’d been telling him all along, which was that I needed to get baptized for me.

  My dad still has moments of conflict about my faith. The conversations between us are ongoing and can be difficult. But he can’t deny the change in me since I’ve come to accept God in my life, and in many ways he’s now very supportive. For example, my mom often gives me a wake-up call on Sunday mornings. (I do like my beauty sleep!) But these days, I’ll hear my dad in the background: “Tell her to get her lazy butt out of that bed and into the shower, or she’s going to be late for church.” Things I thought I’d never hear!

  There’s been another surprising development in my relationship with my dad.

  In the summer of 2013, I got laid off from the doctor’s office where I’d been working as a medical assistant. It wasn’t a huge surprise; we could all see that the practice couldn’t support the number of staff we had working there, and I was the least senior employee. Everyone cried, including the doctor who delivered the news, but in some ways, it was a relief to me. I’d known for years that I didn’t want to be in the medical field, even while I was putting myself through school.

  Still, it was a scary summer. I have a lot of energy and still find myself prone to depression. Having the amount of free time you do when you’re unemployed isn’t a very good situation for me. School did keep me busy—I certainly couldn’t complain anymore that I didn’t have the time to do my best work, and my grades certainly benefited. But though I kept to a strict schedule of prayer and church, and I worked out a lot at the gym, there were still a lot of empty hours in the day.

  I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone that it’s a hard market for jobseekers out there. I applied for job after job after job, and went on interview after interview. Again I was reminded how important the years that I had lost had been. Instead of gaining relevant experience in the workforce, I’d been crawling from drug house to shady motel. Sure, I had experience as a meth dealer, but I couldn’t put that on my resume.

  Many of the applications asked if I
’d ever been arrested, and I answered honestly, as I always do, even though I knew that in most cases, I wouldn’t have the chance to explain the circumstances. Why would they care, anyway? I could easily see it from an employer’s perspective: There were plenty of hungry, overqualified candidates out there without my erratic history.

  It was a hard time for me. The good girl with the perfect grades had to deal with a lot of shame and guilt. I’d been at the top of my class. I was still someone who could spot a typo at twenty feet, someone who’d skip lunch and stay late to set up the kind of revolutionary filing system you didn’t know enough to dream about. Now I couldn’t get the most entry-level job out there, just so I could pay my bills? As the rejections piled up and my savings account ran low, I started to feel very scared.

  Then I saw an ad for a receptionist at a Jewish temple. I applied. They called me in for an interview, and then another one. I had no idea that the position was to be the secretary for the rabbi until after they hired me.

  I’ve been working at the temple for the past year and I can say without qualification that it’s the best job I’ve ever had. I love interacting with the congregants, and I keep the bowl on my desk well-stocked with candy so they always have an excuse to stop by and chat. I love the rabbi and the executive director and all the other people I work with—especially how thoughtful and generous they are with their knowledge and time. I love how grateful my employers are when I go the extra mile. Mostly, I love working in a place of faith.

  I wasn’t sure when to tell everyone at the temple that I was a Christian, and I felt a little nervous about it. Technically, such a thing shouldn’t matter, and everyone who interviewed me was careful not to ask. But when you’re working in a religious environment, it’s pretty much inevitable that the topic is eventually going to come up. I was delighted to find that there was no awkward weirdness at all—the opposite, in fact. That made me even happier to be working there.