Wednesday, March 26, 2008

How do you pick godparents?????

Baptism, what is it? In Christianity, baptism is the sacramental act of cleansing in water that admits one as a full member of the church. It’s the act of offering your child to god and allowing him to be raised with strong moral and spiritual believes. It also means selecting godparents for your child. It’s said that the godparents are the ones who will raise your child and take care of all his needs if anything was to happen to the parents. That’s a huge responsibility! And in turn a HUGE decision to make on behalf of the parents. I have tons of great friends and wonderful family members. I could name off a dozen people right now that I would trust and feel safe knowing Drew was in their care. However is it something they want? Would they feel a responsibility to say yes if we asked them because socially they feel it’s not something you can say no to? A few years back an estranged older adopted brother of Mike’s came breezing back into his life after more than 10 years. The brother said he had his life together finally; he was married again and had two kids-which brought his grand total of offspring somewhere between 7 and 11. The brother made a big push to get back into Mike and his mom’s life. After a few visits and dozens of phone calls, we were ready to give him a second chance. Within the year his wife had given birth to their second daughter and they had called us one day asking us to be her godparents. We were VERY leery! I had only met the brother and his wife once or twice and Mike was still a little gun shy from the past. After feeling pushed into it (he cried on the phone! so how could we say no?) we agreed and became godparents to a little precious girl named Chloe. She was perfect and the entire day of the baptism was very special. But that was the first …and last time we saw our godchild…and not by any choice of ours. So how do you pick a godparent? Do you choice your closest friends? What if you drift apart in five or ten years? Do the two people have to be a couple, and if they are not and something happens to you, how would the two of them share the guardianship responsibility? Is it better to go with family members? Are you allowed to have more than one set of godparents? There are so many questions and no answers.

1 comment:

Bob said...

My godparents were picked using the time-tested "monkey and dartboard" method. It involves a monkey and -- wait for it -- a dartboard.

If you use this method, make sure you never stand between the monkey and the dartboard.