And this is how it happened.
No fanfare. No video cameras. No real cameras, even. Only a few camera phones in our midst, and only one photo.
But there was food. And friends. People who have loved him and taught him, want to know about his day and share their food and drink with him. His little friends, too: four boys he loves, wanting to be their leader.
It was long in coming, but quickly decided. He'd been thinking about it, weighing it. His need to fly under the radar - to not get too noticed - kept him from walking up, from saying yes, from wading into muddy lakes with near strangers. But still, always, he kept his heart and mind open to it. And when it was time, it was time.
Our friends - a dear new sister walking with us these last two years here - giving testimony and laying down their heads in cool water.
He came up to us both and said, "I'm ready now," and just like that: baptized.
I admit I felt my heart in my throat. My first response: "Not right now, honey."
This was not my plan, not how I envisioned it, not what I expected. But it was His plan, and I had to let go. I had to let him go.
So it happened, not in the Irish Sea with cold crashing waves. There wasn't time to plan a verse, a speech, a new name we were to choose for him. Instead, it happened in the cool of a summer pool, our pastor here stepping aside so Matt, father to our boy, could baptize his son.
Unplanned and clumsy. Beautiful abstraction. A boy saying yes to God.
Hard to fit all that on a Certificate of Baptism.