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.
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