I got baptized today.

A year ago I entered in to a time of life that was more
grueling than I’d yet to experience.
  And
during that time

God gave me a vision.
 
In the vision I saw myself in a coffin.
 
But my body didn’t look like normal flesh, instead I saw a decrepit,
decaying body composed of black sooty skin, sunken in cheek bones, brittle,
dull hair – everything dead about myself.
 
And the Lord said to me – “Talia, here’s your flesh, let’s bury it and
be done with it.
  Let’s get rid of it.”
  And so God came in like Aslan the Lion and
began ripping away a lot of my grotesque dragon flesh.
  The past year has been a process of seeing a
lot of my flesh die.
 

And then last week our local contact, Samuel, invited us to
a big baptism celebration with his church.
 
An Episcopalian father baptized me as a baby, but I’d yet to be baptized
as an adult (all theological debates aside); so I asked if I could be baptized
as well.
 

This baptism was a tangible symbol of the process God has
been doing in me over the past three years and more specifically the past
year.
  Ripping away my flesh, and then
bathing me, new and fresh.
  Much like Eustace
(from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader) bathed as a dragon and came forth a clean
whole boy.

Likewise, Jon and Eric (my teammates) had not been baptized
and wanted to be.
  So, it became a family
affair and was actually quite special.
 
Here are a gazillion pictures.

*Another sweet blessing from the Lord – when I was 15 or 16
I knew I wanted to be baptized as an adult.
 
However, never got the chance really to do it and in my heart I’d always
wanted to be baptized in a river in a foreign country.
  I wasn’t going to hold out for it, but it was
very sweet that God gave me that to me anyway.

Church celebration beforehand!

I love this shot...:)

*You can actually view it all online if you'de like.  It's only a couple minutes long.  Here's the link. 

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I love you guys!  Thanks for sharing in this with me!