Baptism for those with OCD quickly becomes a deeply challenging consideration. Rachael Kelley’s brilliant article reveals how it seemed that “good Christians” are 100% certain. Living with OCD drives this craving deeper. Her story is one of suffering and courage, stepping into the water—not because the doubts were gone, but because she realized she didn’t have to be perfect to be His. If you’ve ever felt like a “thorn in the side” makes you unworthy, this one is for you.
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Almost two years ago, I decided to get (re)baptized at my church. It’s something I had been thinking about doing for a bit before I made the choice, and it was an empowering and wonderful experience.
The following piece was published on my previous blog on April 6, 2024, and has been slightly edited.
Why Did I Get (Re)Baptized?
I’ve been attending my church for a handful of years now, but I grew up in a loving Christian home and have had a relationship with Jesus since I was young. When I was in sixth grade, I got baptized after finishing confirmation class with my church. I call it my “sprinkle” baptism, because that church practiced infant baptisms instead of having a baptismal tank.
I didn’t decide to get rebaptized because I didn’t think that one counted, but instead, because there was something about the immersion experience that stirred my soul. Getting in the water would bring about a full circle moment of restoration for me—which I’ll get to soon—but there was a second reason why this felt like the right choice and right time.
After moving to southeastern Pennsylvania in 2021, I went through a really difficult season in my faith. I arrived there right after graduating college, and on top of the loneliness I was battling, the world felt more divided than ever. Those polarizations seeped into my perspective on God, and I entered a season consumed by doubt.
I’d struggled with little doubts my entire life, but this was different. I wrestled with almost every controversial faith topic you can dream of, and when I could never be 100% sure I’d found the correct answer, I descended into a spiral that left me feeling lost.
I never turned away from my faith, but there were moments where it felt like the easier choice.
In preparing to share my testimony on my baptism day, I spent a lot of time reflecting on those early days of living in Pennsylvania. God has done an incredible amount of work in my heart since then, and I now know His love in a deeper, truer, and fuller way. But the faith I have now is only possible because of that broken and wandering version of myself. It was simultaneously one of the hardest and most beautiful parts of my walk so far (except for maybe the summer of 2025).
What’s important to know now is that God sustained me through that difficult season, and after being drawn back to His steady ground, I rediscovered the kindness of His heart.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. About half a year after that hard season ended, I discovered something new about myself. That’s the part of my testimony I want to focus on in this reflection.
My Mental Health Journey
It probably won’t come as a surprise to you because of the title of this piece, but this “something new” was the realization that I have OCD.
A quick side bar—in the ironic way of OCD’s workings, recently (in 2024 when this was originally written) I’ve had the worry that I’ve been talking and writing too much about it. That fear led me to do some reflecting on why I decided to share about it in the beginning.
Apart from wanting to celebrate the healing God has led me to, I think OCD gets misunderstood and misrepresented a lot. It took me over two decades before I realized my brain was wired in a way that worked differently than normal anxiety, and I’m inclined to believe that there are a lot more people like me in the world. People who don’t know what kind of mental battle they’re fighting, who don’t have the right understanding or tools to manage the spirals their brain keeps imprisoning them in.
If you don’t know much about OCD, the most important thing to understand is that it is a disorder that craves certainty. OCD can’t handle the anxiety that comes with doubt, so it will do anything it can to get reassurance. If you want to learn more about how OCD works, what it can look like for different people, and what treatment options are available, you can check out my first post on this topic, Shedding a Light on OCD. There are also a number of helpful resources on this website!
Obsessive thinking is something I’ve wrestled with my entire life. But until a desperate internet search two summers ago led me to my discovery, I didn’t have a name for it. It was always just that strange, frustrating way my brain worked, a cycle of doubt and anxiety and relief that I could never seem to leave behind.
My moment of revelation reminds me of the beautiful prayer found in the second chapter of Daniel. Earlier in the chapter, King Nebuchadnezzar had threatened to destroy all the wise men of Babylon unless someone could interpret a dream he’d had. Daniel and his friends, being members of that afflicted group, prayed for divine understanding. After the Lord answered Daniel’s petition, it prompted him to lift up a prayer:
“He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.”
Daniel 2:22
That’s what it felt like when I stumbled upon the Reddit post that helped connect the dots between my brain’s abnormal wiring and the symptoms of OCD. The Lord brought a hidden thing I was struggling with out into the light, and being able to see it and name it was instantly freeing. From that awareness, He was then gracious enough to teach me how to start responding to my obsessions.
Though I believe in the Lord’s healing power, I came to understand pretty quickly that my OCD was going to be like that “thorn in my side” Paul described in 2 Corinthians. Until all of creation is restored in the New Creation, it’s something I have to learn to live with.
God has done a lot of work in restoring my internal relationship to my OCD. But it was not (and is still not) an instant fix. It’s something I have to put effort toward every day, and sometimes I get discouraged when I fall back into old patterns. But in some moments, I can see the harvest that my sowing has produced, and I know that the effort I’ve put in is leading me toward real change.
This changed relationship with my OCD has not only brought peace and freedom into my life, but has prompted me to form a deeper reliance on Jesus. That’s why I keep coming back to the page to talk about it again and again—my life was altered because of the freedom I found through Him, and I don’t want to keep that to myself.
Why I Was Afraid of Baptism
So how does getting baptized connect to everything I just shared? And why was getting in the tank so important in both my OCD and faith journey?
Well, that’s the full circle moment I’m here to write about.
Like I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I got baptized (via the “sprinkle”) at the same time I was confirmed at my previous church. As I went through the confirmation class sessions, I found myself thinking about the upcoming baptism with a familiar surge of apprehension.
The idea of getting baptized had always made me a little fearful. Several years before, when my family still lived in Ohio, we attended a church that practiced baptism by immersion. I was about eight years old when I watched my brother get up in front of the church, proclaim his faith in Jesus, and get submerged in the baptismal.
At the time, I didn’t know we would end up moving to New Jersey before I was old enough to experience that kind of baptism myself. So after my brother went under the water and rose again, I imagined what my own plunge would be like.
That’s when I realized I was afraid.
It wasn’t about the water or being in front of a crowd.
It was the words.
Before getting submerged, my brother had to confess that he believed in Jesus with his entire heart. All 100%.
When I heard those words spoken over my brother and imagined them being asked to me, I was gripped with worry.
Did I actually trust in Jesus with 100% of my heart?
I’d had faith in God for as long as I could remember, but I also experienced doubts. Did my questions mean that I wasn’t a valid believer? Would it be lying if I said I believed in Jesus with my entire heart when there was a tiny part of myself that wasn’t so sure?
It felt like if I got in that tank with my doubts, I would be a liar and a horrible Christian.
So young Rachael made a deal with herself.
“It’s okay if I have doubts right now,” she thought. “I just need to be sure they’re gone by the time I’m old enough to be baptized. Once I can declare with complete certainty that I believe with 100% of my heart, then I will be worthy of getting in the tank.”
But even as the years passed, it always felt like bits of that doubt still existed. No matter how hard I tried convincing myself my faith was rock solid, that place of 100% belief always felt just out of reach. I secretly started to dread my future baptism because I knew that I’d never be ready, and I didn’t want to lie in front of the whole congregation…or God!
But before that day came, as I mentioned earlier, my family moved away from Ohio. Some time passed before we got settled into a new church in New Jersey, and when the topic of baptism came up again, I’ll confess that I was relieved when I learned that the church didn’t practice immersion. I didn’t have to worry about that terrifying moment of declaration in the tank anymore.
So let’s go back to the time I was “sprinkle” baptized in sixth grade. As I was going through the confirmation classes and preparing for the big moment, I remember thinking about our church in Ohio and its baptismal. Those same old fears edged their way back into my heart, seizing my chest with thrums of worry.
Did I actually believe in Jesus with 100% of my heart?
Some days, the answer felt clear. Of course I believed! I was attending church every week, had started going to youth group, and visited Christian camps most summers.
But there were still doubts that popped into my mind from time to time. Sometimes they were about small things, but sometimes they felt bigger. Much bigger. There were moments where I questioned the very existence of God, which felt way too scary for a good Christian girl like me to be thinking about.
So could I really say I believed with my entire heart when those moments still happened? I didn’t know. But I didn’t know how to keep them from happening, either.
When the moment for my “sprinkle” baptism finally came, I stomped down all of my worries like whack-a-mole and reassured myself that yes, I did have faith. Of course I did! Maybe I had doubts before, but not anymore. My heart belonged to God. All 100%!
I remember closing my eyes as the pastor scooped a handful of water onto my head, feeling relieved as the cool drops trickled down my scalp.
I had done it. I had gotten through it.
What I Know Now
But guess what?
It’s been over a decade since that first baptism, and I still have doubts. Usually it’s small things, so the pie chart feels like 99% faith with just a 1% slice of uncertainty.
But like I mentioned at the start of this, I had a really hard season in my walk with God when I first moved to PA. The doubts got bigger and bigger, and eventually it felt like the scale of my heart had been reversed. For the first time, my faith felt like it was being outweighed by my doubts. I was miles away from that 100% belief I’d always strived to achieve.
Once the intensity of that difficult season had faded, a long season of rebuilding commenced. There is still restoration to come, but I now live from the kindness of Jesus in a way I never used to know.
After all that, it would make sense if I didn’t experience doubt anymore. Surviving that hard season could have seemed like the final exam to achieve 100% belief, which is why I finally felt ready to get in the baptismal.
Right?
Haha—no.
You see, young Rachael thought that having faith meant 100% belief with 0% doubt. Young Rachael thought that being submerged in the baptismal tank meant that you had become victorious in The Great War of Questioning, after which you would never have doubts about God ever again.
That’s what being a “good” Christian meant to young Rachael.
No uncertainties, only rock solid faith.
But the Rachael in her mid-twenties knows that’s not true. Questions and doubts are not to be feared; they’re a significant, very normal part of having a relationship with God. Though it can make our lives more difficult when we don’t get answers, uncertainty draws us closer to Jesus. I can testify to this after the hard season of faith I went through and every hard, obsessive-filled day I’ve had since.
When I look back on my old fear of baptism, I can now see how OCD was shadowing my thoughts even back then. Like I said previously, OCD can’t handle the anxiety that comes with being uncertain. Young Rachael didn’t want to lie about believing in Jesus with her entire heart, so she needed to feel 100% sure she was telling the truth. That meant that every time a God-related doubt appeared, her all-or-nothing thought patterns blasted the warning alarm. It was like a big red sign had started flashing, loudly announcing that she was a doubting, fake Christian unless she could do something to fix it.
Of course I’m being hyperbolic here. It’s not like the obsessions were showing up every second of every day. But the worries about baptism and my doubts were real, and through the context of OCD, I now understand why.
I wouldn’t wish OCD on anyone, but as I’ve walked in this new awareness, I’m growing in my faith in ways I didn’t foresee. Now instead of scrabbling for immediate answers to complicated questions, I’m learning to trust God in the gray areas. When I experience doubts, which I still have and will continue to have until Jesus returns, I’m not scared of it in the way I used to be.
I’m more willing to live alongside my fears these days. I’m more okay with answering my OCD’s demands for assurance with “I don’t know, but I can trust that God does.” Persisting through my trials of doubt is one of the hardest things He’s asked me to do, but beneath the panic that I’ll be stuck there forever, I’m learning to trust that each storm will pass. And I’m learning how to remember the promise that He is with me in both the during and the after.
Young Rachael thought that being a Christian meant 100% belief, but now I know that was never the goal. I was never made to achieve a faith of 100% certainty and control, but I was made to rely on Jesus to help my unbelief (Mark 9:24 is a life saver, am I right?).
God always knew that 99% faith was the very best I could do on my own, and He also knew that most days would be way less than that. That’s why He sent Jesus, the only man who ever lived with perfect faith, to make my own complete.
Because of this, I can acknowledge my weakness and let go of my striving, because where I am weak is where I learn to rely on His strength more. Instead of chasing after a perfect, all-knowing, uncertainty-free belief, I can trust in the Author and Perfecter of my faith to make me whole.
A Full Circle Moment
On March 17th, 2024, I got up in front of my church to share (a much shorter version of) the testimony you just read. I told them about my difficult season of belief, my wrestling with OCD, my worries about baptism, and my restored understanding of faith and doubt.
I finished by confessing that I believed in Jesus as my Lord and Savior with 99% of my entire heart. As laughter rippled through the congregation, I added, smiling, that I was going to trust Him with the rest.
Then I folded up my paper, hands still slightly shaking, and padded along the church’s carpeted stage. My pastor was waiting for me in the baptismal, and he offered me a hand as I stepped down into the tank.
The water was warm, and it swirled against my skin in pleasant wakes as my toes reached the bottom of the pool. My pastor thanked me for sharing my testimony, said a few words about the importance of acknowledging our unbelief, and cited a verse that I’d read in my Bible reading plan that very morning.
Then it was time for The Question. It was The Question young Rachael used to fear, but I now found myself looking forward to it.
That Saturday night before my baptism, I had been plagued with shadows of old fears, their whispers accusing me that my answer to The Question wouldn’t be true. But I had anticipated their return, and instead of fighting the fear away, I invited God to be with me in it.
Yes, I still had doubts. Yes, a part of me still wondered about big questions. Yes, I wasn’t getting into the tank as the perfect believer I used to think I had to be.
But the Lord is bigger than young Rachael could have ever imagined. So big and loving, in fact, that He created a way to make my faith whole without me ever needing to achieve 100% faith.
All I had to do was let Him help me.
A smile spread across my pastor’s face, and then he asked The Question.
“Rachael, is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?”
I don’t remember feeling any fear when I responded.
Yes.
Once I’d given my answer, I crossed my arms, pinched my nose, and was plunged into the living water. I remember the noise of the room falling away as I was submerged. I couldn’t see anything besides the dark of my own eyelids, and my ears filled with something like the rush of a river. The moment lasted for what felt like several seconds, and then I was being lifted back up. Sounds of celebration met me as I broke through the surface, eyelids still squeezed shut. I swiped the water from my eyes, blinked my pastor’s grin into view, and felt a huge smile blossom across my lips.
I had done it.
But this time was different, because instead of just getting through it, my heart was sparkling with joy. I didn’t feel ashamed of my doubts anymore—they were still there, but now I knew they didn’t disqualify me. They didn’t make me weak. Not in the way I used to think, anyway.
I spent the afternoon celebrating with my family over pizza and calamari. As I ate, my mind kept traveling back to that moment underwater, pondering over how different it had felt from what I’d anticipated. Both young and older Rachael had envisioned being baptized dozens of times. I’d thought about what my heart would feel like when I proclaimed my faith, what the temperature of the water would be, how I would be soaked from head to toe when I got submerged.
But I’d never thought about what it would sound like. That moment of submersion had been unexpectedly quiet, though not entirely silent. As I was under the surface, it was as if the entire world had been whisked away, leaving me blind and deaf to everything but the water that carried me.
The writer in me wants to tie that moment up with some allegorical bow (as I often enjoy doing) and say something about how being in the water imitates the love of God, or maybe the way I’m learning to rely on Him in every circumstance.
But I think I’m going to just leave it as it is. I’m going to leave it as a moment that will stick in my memory, not because I’d rehearsed it dozens of times in my head and knew what it would be like, or because of some metaphor I can create from it, but because it truly surprised me.
He Always Does
There’s one more thing I want to share about my baptism story. I was at a spiritual high the weekend of my baptism, but the very day after, I was rocked by another earthquake of doubts. On Monday, a short conversation with a coworker triggered faith-related obsessions that I hadn’t struggled with since the early Pennsylvania months. I thought I’d be able to brush them off quickly, but to my dismay, they stuck around for the better part of the week. Even after all the joy and peace I had felt on Sunday, I still wasn’t immune to uncertainty.
It was tempting to fall back into shame. I’d just given a mini-sermon on how far I’d come in my faith, and now I was feeling completely shaky again. I was discouraged that one conversation could bring up old doubts so easily, and it made me wonder how firm my faith foundation really was.
But amidst the heavy winds and darkness I suddenly found myself traversing through again, I realized something. Was I wrestling with some of the same topics I used to? Yes. Would I experience another storm like this in the future? Almost definitely yes.
(2026 Rachael can attest to that!)
But what was different this time, and every time going forward, is that I am not the same person I used to be.
I’m not the young Rachael who thought that her doubts made her bad.
I’m not the lost Rachael who didn’t understand that she had OCD.
I’m not the hopeless Rachael who believed her difficult season of faith would last forever.
The week after my baptism was hard. But even though I didn’t know when the doubts would end, I remembered that I had a decision to make. I could either let my doubts define me and fall back into shame, or I could choose to trust what the Lord had already shown me He could do.
I found myself repeating the words of my testimony again and again, clinging to a tiny strand of hope as I forged ahead.
I may feel afraid, but He is with me even in my doubts.
I may feel weak, but I can rely on Him to strengthen me.
I may feel stuck, but He will see me through to the other side of this storm.
And He did.
He always does.
While Rachael Kelley has lived in a number of places, she has been happy to call Southeastern Pennsylvania home for the past several years. Rachael works in the marketing/design field and also loves writing, taking walks, staying involved in her local church, and finding ways to bring people together. When she’s not writing fiction, she enjoys telling stories of how she’s seen Christ reflected in creation, people, movies, and her OCD healing journey.
You can follow Rachael on Substack @rachaelannewrites or Instagram: @rachael.anne.writes
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