Your First Church
When you were a child, there were places in your childhood where you would go and I’m sure that God would meet you there— like a tree house, or a special place behind the school playground…
For Samantha, when she was 6 years old, her church was a rooftop where she would go and cry. God was sitting on that rooftop with her holding her tears in his hands. To this day, I believe that God saved those tears in a glass jar. And he uses them as wishing tears. Every time she cried, she put her wishes inside those tears.
And he saved them. He saved all her wishes.
You know how parents save their kid’s drawings?
God once told me that he saves our childhood wishes and puts them in a wishing well. God’s wishing well is made of the tears of children— like tears of hope. When you grow older and your wishes come true— it ignites the wishes of all the children who still have that same wish.
Your fulfilled wishes become an inspiration around the world.
God told me that angels take those wishes, and as a momento, every winter, make an imprint of that wish and put it inside of a snow flake. Every time it snows, we are experiencing the wishes of children falling down from heaven.
Your Dream Space
Remember when you were a child? Did you have a secret hiding place?
Like a fort or tree house, or where you would crawl under your bed?
Did you ever go somewhere where you could imagine your own magic fairy land?
I call these… your dream space. It’s where you went as a child to dream your dreams— uninterrupted.
Did you have someone who listened to your dreams? Who helped you imagine what it was like in your dream world? Someone who you told all your secrets to?
Like an imaginary friend?
Or a blanket, a binkie?
A teddy bear?
A doll?
A pillow?
If you asked that object, your dream partner, how they remember you— they would not see you as your adult self, as you are now.
They would still remember you as the age you were— when you held them tight, when you dreamed your dreams at night, when you hid in your fort and imagined a world where you were a super hero, or a preacher, or a teacher, or a fireman, or a princess…
They would still remember you… this way…
The way that God remembers you.
The way you were when you were in little league.
The way you were when you would hold your dad’s hand.
The way you were when you rode your bike in circles and circles and circles in the cul-de-sac in front of your house.
They would remember you in your Dream Space— when you were dreaming the dream of your soul.
Journal
In your journal, please write:
What was your Dreaming Space when you were a child?
Where could you go— to imagine? Or hide from the world?
What holds the energy of your childhood self?
When you were a child, what was the object or thing that you always had with you the most? That went with you, everywhere you went?
Teddy Bear Baptism
Now, let’s do our Teddy Bear baptism. If you have your stand-in for your childhood self, please go get that now. We are going to baptize your youth.
In God’s eyes, you are forever young.
When you were a child, you used to hug God in your Teddy Bear.
You used to smell God in your binkie.
You used to feel God in your puppy dog.
You used to see God in your gramma’s eyes when she looked at you.
When you recognized God, you held each other tight and you went everywhere together.
When God was in your teddy bear and in your binkie, remember when you placed God in a safe spot each time you left to go to school— so that you would never lose him?
Do you remember when you kissed God and hugged God— every night?
God remembers. God remembers you this way.
Hold up your childhood memento— and say this out loud:
I baptize you— as the dream of my soul.
You are the very special part of me… that lives forever.
In the name of the father…
In the name of the mother…
In the name of the nonbinary parent….
In the name of the son….
In the name of the daughter…
In the name of the nonbinary child….
I baptize you in the name of Love.
