Day 106 - Tuesday 15th April

Faith

This week we are doing the Seven Heavenly Virtues. The first one is Faith.
I do not have a religious faith. I got married in church but only because it seemed to be right thing to do. We were quite pressured to have Zoë christened but we came to a compromise on this.
I managed to find a vicar who would perform a naming ceremony in a venue of our choice. Because she was a vicar she would make the ceremony as religious or non-religious as we wanted. We had total say in what was covered in the ceremony. We decided to go for a non-religious ceremony and to make promises and commitments to Zoë about how we would love and care for her, educate her, encourage her and make sure she developed emotionally, intellectually and physically into a young woman.
It was a lovely ceremony and I felt it meant much more to us as it was based around us as a family and we only promised things that we knew we would stick to.
She had Godparents who also made pledges to Zoë and also it involved the grandparents. It was a real lovely family occasion with everyone there, celebrating Zoë’s life and pledging to be there for her. She was given a book with the whole ceremony printed out in it which we all had to sign to confirm our pledges to her.
Zoë wore a christening gown that James, his father, his grandma and his great grandma had been christened in – it was over 100 years old.