I’m Adam Counts. This is how I, along with my wife Jessica and family, am living deeply. 

“This summer, we experienced God’s kindness in an answered prayer a long time in the making. Our pursuit of baptism for our children, Micah and Skye, wound through five duty stations and just as many church families- and through every move, that longing never left us. When our first, Micah, was born, Jessica and I were both serving in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We found a church family there in the mid-2010s, but our season with them ended sooner than we expected. We didn’t get to see baptism for Micah through before we moved on. It was disappointing- we’d been hoping so much to have him baptized, and suddenly we didn’t have a church home at all. Not long after, I got promoted to Captain and received orders to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for a nine-month leadership school. Our second child, Skye, was born there. By then only one of us was still in the Army- during the pregnancy, Jessica had decided to leave her career to raise our kids full-time. We hoped the post chapel might be the place to get both kids baptized, but it wasn’t set up to offer what we were looking for- we came away disappointed again. When I finished the leadership school at Fort Sill, the Army sent me to Korea for a year, away from my family. Jessica and the kids settled in Knoxville, where our roots were, and found a wonderful church family there. Yet infant baptism wasn’t an option there, so the wait went on. We were beginning to wonder if this sign and seal of baptism, marking God’s initiative in salvation and our own pledge to raise our children to follow Him, would ever be conferred on them.

After Korea, we were stationed in Tacoma, Washington, where we found another good church family- but again, baptism for the kids wasn’t something that congregation practiced. That tour was hard on me professionally, and the ongoing ache of not getting the kids baptized only added to it. I was ready for a change, and glad when my last assignment before retirement took us to the United Kingdom. I served as the U.S. Army liaison officer to the Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing, working alongside the British Army. Station to station, we continued to quietly carry the same hope, but the opportunity to baptize our children just never came about. And that’s how we arrived at this summer. I’d been retired from the Army a year, thrilled to be settled back in Knoxville and, even more, to be ‘home’ theologically and spiritually at CSPC. Finally, we would get to bring our children before the Lord and publicly commit to raising them to know Him. As we drove down to a scenic tributary of the Tennessee River to meet Pastor Jonathan Bromhead on a picturesque August day, my emotions were running high- overflowing, really, in contrast to the calm waters of Fort Loudoun Lake, by the time the service started. The whole experience was glorious. God’s presence was so near. I told Jessica, Micah, and Skye on the way there that I could finally see why God had waited: because He had something more special and intimate in mind for our family than anything I could have arranged myself. What a lesson in patience and trust, among so many since I took off my uniform last July. God answered our fervent prayer, and I can’t imagine feeling His tender, Fatherly care more strongly than in that moment, at that place, with this church family.”