The Missing Piece

The Missing Piece

By Tracy Ritter, Class of 2013

Westminster, South Carolina

Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him.

Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught,

and you will overflow with thankfulness. Colossians 2:7                                                                                                                                

   

                I was baptized almost seven years ago -- on my eleventh birthday. I'm not sure that I fully understood the meaning of baptism at that age. I was merely going through the motions, and simply did what my friends were doing.

            But this year, I made a very personal decision.  I chose to be rebaptized, to recommit myself to God, and accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. I want to be an example for others; my friends, my family, and those I have not even met.

            Over the years, I had been slowly separating myself from God; and I wasn't very happy. My life was like a puzzle. All of the pieces on the sides were small and mostly insignificant. But there was one piece in the middle that was larger than the others; and I was missing that piece. Without it, my puzzle wasn't complete. When I finally stepped back to take a look at it, I realized the hole was large and very noticeable. This was not something I could hide. I couldn't put tape on it and pretend it wasn't missing, or try to glue something else on top of it. At a glance, things may have seemed to be okay. But if someone were to look really closely, they would see that things weren't fitting together like they should have been. I kept trying to fill in that hole with other things. But I finally realized that the only thing that could fill that void was God. He's the giant missing piece to my puzzle!

            I didn’t get baptized again because I don't think it worked the first time. But I needed to completely start over, and let God wipe my slate clean.This isn't a guarantee that now that I'm baptized everything will always work out, and my relationship with God will be perfect. I'm letting God and everyone else around me know that from now on I'm going to take our relationship seriously. I am dedicating my life to serving Him and following His will.

            God doesn't want us to come to Him thinking everything is perfect. He wants us to come to Him broken and imperfect, so He can transform us. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders! I'm going to let God take full and complete control of my life. I look forward to spending my new life with Him!