See also past and current Facets    

Baptizing David

Chaplaincy is different from parish ministry in that more often than not I never know how the next chapter in my patients’ lives will unfold or how the story will end. But last Spring God gave me the joy and blessing of seeing one chapter close and another begin.

In 1991 I wrote my first article for Lutheran Partners about my work as a chaplain in labor and delivery and the neonatal intensive care nursery (“How Do You Do What You Do?” March/April 1991, pp. 15-18). One of the stories I told was about baptizing a very tiny baby girl. The girl, whom I named Julie after a nurse I admire, was really a composite of several Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) babies I’d baptized. But the details of the baptism really belonged to a boy named David.

Claiming David for God
I was called to the delivery room to baptize David before his transfer to the NICU. He weighed just an ounce or two more than one pound, and his prospects for survival were not good. This was fifteen years ago, and we weren’t saving as many “micro-preemies” intact as we do today. As I came into the room, the doctor said, “Hurry, Linda.” David’s mother had her fingertips on his hand, and his father held one tiny foot as he buried his face in Sue’s pillow and wept.

As I put the water on his almost transparent head and repeated the old words that claimed David as God’s own son, I was filled with a sudden conviction that he would live and be fine. Knowing the hard reality that if David did live he was likely to be severely handicapped and face a lifetime of health problems prevented me from sharing my certainty with anybody. As I finished “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen,” the nurses raced away to the nursery with David, and I did not get to mark him with the cross.

In my prayer with his parents, Sue and Wayne, I did pray for David to be healed and whole. It was an acknowledgement of the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in that room filled with sadness and fear.

Weeks and months passed, and David went through many trials. He got infections, went off the respirator and back on again, and at one point could not tolerate food and began to lose weight. The doctors would shake their heads and the nurses would look grim. Wayne and Sue were wearing out from living on the edge.

I would see David almost every day and tell him what a good, brave boy he was. I made up a song to sing to him. I prayed and prayed. I told him Earth was still his home for now and he couldn’t leave yet. I hoped so much that my belief in his recovery was true. Slowly David grew, he learned to eat and to breathe, and one day he was ready to be discharged. I had nicknamed him my little cowboy, and I gave him a western outfit to wear home. During all that time I forgot that I had not completed his baptism with the sign of the cross.

But in April of 2005, I was reminded. Sue called me and said, “Do you remember me?”

“I could never forget you,” I replied.

“What are you doing on Saturday?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What am I doing on Saturday?”

“Can you come to David’s confirmation? Will you go up with us and lay your hand on him?”

“Yes! Try to keep me away!”

Marked with the Cross
When I saw David at the church I had to look up and up. He is over six feet tall and weighs 195 pounds. He carries no consequences of his prematurity and early illness. When he knelt at the altar to make his promises my hand and those of his parents were upon him just as they had been on the day of his birth.

David stood, and I reached up and made the sign of the cross on his forehead saying, “You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” He said, “Thank you.”

I don’t know why David survived when others could not. I don’t know what he will do with his life, whether he will do anything the world considers important, whether he will stray from faith and return or hold his faith close his whole life long. But I wrote down for him the secret I had kept for so many years — that when I touched him with baptismal waters the Holy Spirit whispered to me that he would live. I hope knowing that God is faithful to him will help him to write the remaining chapters of his story. It has certainly helped me in closing this chapter of mine.

Linda Franciso Bets, an associate in ministry, works as a chaplain at Iowa Lutheran Hospital, Des Moines, Iowa.