Taking kids to church...it's the devil's business

After church service on Sunday, a friend said that she couldn’t wait to see what I posted about the experience on my blog (because, as you’ll soon understand, the experience was worth some color commentary), and the idea gave me pause. I mean, is it okay for me to write about church on here? Will I have to sacrifice my patented cynicism and derisive wisecracks? Will it cause me to be any further in the divine doghouse than I already am? Well, the answer is a resounding hell no! The good lord made me this way, and I think he can deal.

Let’s start at the beginning. I sometimes take the kids to church by myself so that Sutton can go to work or do things around the house without their…let’s call it “help.” I’m 48% sure that this kind of martrydom gives me double Jesus points (it’s like a rewards program for the afterlife – after 10,000 points you get dead celebrity visitation and haunting privileges).

Sunday was one of those days. And I should have known that I was in for it when the kids were dressed and ready to go on time and they weren’t fussing or trying to shank me as I stuffed them in their carseats. Nothing good comes from cooperative children at home; they use up all of their best behavior before you back down the driveway, and it’s pandelerium once you hit the streets.

When we got to church, they were eerily calm, and I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck reach skyward. But they continued to be relatively well behaved through the first half of the service, and I started to relax a bit. Even during Children’s Moments (an opportunity for the rest of the congregation to enjoy the off-topic interruptions and barely-intelligible banter that their parents get to experience all…day…long), Suttie and Molly were on point, despite Suttie’s misguided response of “Hazel Green” when asked what nation other than the U.S. he belonged to (the answer was the Christian Nation, but I can’t fault him for representing his roots – Trojan pride, what! what!).

And then my son marched off to the nursery with the other diminutive parishioners, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, knowing that I only had one heavenly blessing left to wrangle. But Molly knows when the sermon starts, and that child does not like to be told what she should and shouldn’t do in this life. As soon as our preacher started to pour out his wisdom, Molly started to pour out her apple juice, right down the pew in front of us by expertly hitting the nozzle against the wood with a perfectly timed repetitive thud.

So I did what any reasonable parent would have done. I took the cup. Big mistake. Huge. Because when you take the cup, you poke the bear. And the bear will claw your face off.

Amid random slaps and manufactured tears, I started to dig into my Mary Poppins carpet bag and pull out anything and everything to keep her quiet and content. “Molly, do you want this princess phone? A pez dispenser? A baby doll? A pocket knife? Some pepper spray? A floor lamp? A coat rack? Dammit, Poppins, none of this is working!”

At this point, I looked at my watch to see that we were only five minutes into the sermon and I had no toy options left. And then, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Suttie handing me a piece of construction paper that read, “Suttie is lovable” and pushing himself into the seat next to me. Now, typically, the nursery lasts until the end of church, so you can imagine my shock and confusion when he showed up with thirty minutes left in the service.

So I asked him what he was doing there, and he said, “I came for community,” which translated means “I came for communion,” which translated means, “I came to get my take of the bread and grape juice.” To which my mind said, “What the hell, kid! We’re doomed now,” but my mouth said, “Ok.”

At the end of this exchange, I realized that Molly had somehow found my phone and was now using it to scratch the back of the person sitting in front of us. And then it fell. And you know when you have kids in church and there’s a hardwood floor and they drop some brick of an object and you’re just praying that it doesn’t have wheels so that it doesn’t roll all the way down to the altar. Yeah, that’s a pretty craptastic feeling.

And you want to interrupt and say you’re sorry or something like, “Don’t mind us; we’re just here from the district office to test the preacher’s performance under pressure,” but you can’t because you can’t lie in church. And you aren’t from the district and you’re not sorry – no, you’re pissed because every man, woman, beam, board, and nail in the place is part of a conspiracy to make you look like an idiot parent who let your child get ahold of your rubberized phone and then drop it. Am I right? No? How about over here? No? It’s just me then.

At this point, Suttie, realizing that there’s a free phone up for grabs, picked it up, and I thought, “Oh, good, he’s old enough to help a sister out,” so I turned my attention back to Gollum who was pulling out everything she shouldn’t have and whispering “My precious!” only to look back down at the “good one” long enough to realize that he was playing Angry Birds in the middle of God’s house, a.k.a. prime smiting position.

So I sat on the phone (something I don’t like to think about when it’s pressed against my face) and started to map out an exit strategy. Only I couldn’t concentrate because my mom gave Suttie a giant calculator the day before that he insisted on bringing with him and he kept typing in numbers and asking me, “What does this spell?”

Finally, I set Molly down in front of me, thinking that she might be content to simply stand (and also to get myself out of the line of fire), but before I had a firm grasp on her hand, she immediately walked out of the pew and toward the door, as if to say, “Peace, God! I’ll hit you up next week or sumpin” and then I was faced with my own Sophie’s choice because there was Suttie smacking his lips at the little vials of grape juice that he knew were hidden within the communion trays while Molly was doing her Frankenstein stagger toward the Fellowship Hall. So, I frantically whispered, “Be good! Go to communion with Aunt Selena” and took off after the child who still tries to eat dog food, knowing that this was the only choice that I could make, but still feeling no better about it.

Nor should I…because five minutes after being in the Fellowship Hall with Molly (which has speakers that project the goings-on in the Sanctuary), I heard our preacher ask if anyone had any prayer requests to make and then a small voice, like a sparrow trilling into the wind, asked the entire congregation to “Pray for Molly to be good.” And I knew whose voice it was. And I palmed my face.

Yes, it was one for the record books, people. And I invite you, the next time you’re in church with me and two of God’s more distracting angels, to take one of them. Seriously, just come and grab one. I don’t care which; just get your hands on one and walk away. I’m not gonna say it’s God’s will, but, I mean, who knows, it could be. Doesn’t the Bible say something about it taking a village? No, that was Hillary Clinton. Whatever, Jesus points, y’all.