Crazy at Church

Dear internet-dom,

  I should start this out by saying I am looking for advice--but I'm not. Not seeking for sympathy or "you can do it!" boosters either. In fact, my graduate school advisor would completely scratch this post and tell me that I've written a clump of sentences that has no purpose or point and so I'd do well to erase it, find something worthwhile to accomplish with my writing, and start over.

  This is just documenting a moment in the life.

  Attending church is a staple of my Sabbath days. Except for the beginning few months, my entire married life I've had responsibility in my congregation that requires my presence at Sunday worship services (organist, teacher, nursery mom, etc.). It's never been a question of whether or not I should be at church. We go, and each time a baby has joined our family, that attending "we" has multiplied. 

  No two Sundays are ever the same. Our church attendance can be represented by a long line of stratified data points on a spectrum between "miraculously well-behaved" and "tell me again why I got this dress on to stand for two hours at a drinking fountain amusing my 15 month-old"--with a lot more points near the "crazy church attendees" end than the "angels with golden curls" goal.

  Today a fellow churchgoer whom I quite admire spoke to our congregation. The topic: commandment #4, Sabbath day worship. Part of her message was geared toward young parents such as myself, listing appropriate ways to train reverent children during church meetings. Unfortunately, those fifteen minutes of advice, for me, became an experience not unlike this video. Her first suggestion was to keep the kids separate, with parents in the middle. Ah, check. We do that. Well, we try, at least, when my 3 year old isn't diving across our laps and my 15 month-old isn't army-crawling under our legs to wrestle big sister's shoes off her feet. These disruptions could be eliminated by the next suggestion: never let your child's feet touch the ground--children under 2 can spend the meeting on the parent's lap. Strict training with profitable dividends! And this mother accomplished it with her six children (coveting can start here).

 As she spoke this advice, my youngest was up the stairs on her way to the podium, with both feet on the ground and quite expertly transporting herself. Subsequent advice highlighted similar lapses on my part: no food in church (distracting)...Had she seen the fruit snacks that kept my kids still (but not quiet) during the first 5 minutes of her talk?...no toys in church (distracting)...We forgot all our toys this week except one cloth book and I was trying to teleport any trinket or doo-bobs in my daughter's currently messy room to our pew...and above all, keep your children from distracting others around you...Failure of the day = wearing heels which click-clacked as I unsuccessfully tiptoe-sprinted after my daughter making another escape attempt down the hardwood aisle.

  Exposed and embarrassed, I sought refuge in the foyer where I listened to other ways she'd trained her young kids to behave at church and at home. I was ashamed as she spoke. But I expected more embarrassment for my family's misbehavior rather than my actual embarrassment for not being more ashamed of our less-than perfect behavior. 

  To be honest, I had let my little one escape from our pew because #1 she would be quieter in the aisle than on my lap and #2 I love when she flashes a smile before racing back into my arms. I know I could work better on disciplining my kids (both actually doing it and, more importantly, doing it patiently and well). But already my girls grow at astonishing speeds. I have the awful habit of gazing downstream at memories and moments that have washed beyond my wading area before turning to look upstream with dread at the new surges of river-water headed towards me, not because they are challenging or unknown, but because they force the precious water swirling around my watery tennis shoes irrevocably downstream. My little girl couldn't walk at the start of this year, and now she is running, climbing, turning, and mischievously smiling back at the Mom she knows and can call by name. 

  I was embarrassed because I was not more ashamed of the way I enjoyed my girls' antics, of how I smiled even as I was overwhelmingly exasperated at hauling a squirming 25 pound dressed up whirlwind back to a seat she would escape whether I wanted her to or not five seconds later. I was called out in my act of digression, as my children disrupted the quiet and reverent atmosphere so craved in our busy world.

  But I don't have very long with my little girls--tomorrow they are a day older, and this little sprite that I impatiently and fervently love will disappear, replaced by a lovely and beautiful fairy child that is almost intangibly different, but the next day another version surfaces, and after a month's-worth of near-indecipherable gradations, a completely new creature has been born...and there is no way for me to embrace the wild-spirited child that existed before. 

  And so I try to contain my energetic offspring, but please don't lose patience with me as I indulge in their antics one more time. Hopefully I'll get it all pulled together before they are the permanently feral church children. But let me enjoy this sensation, right now, mid-stream, before it washes away in the beautiful but never-slowing current.

**Note: This post is not intended to berate or disparage the speaker. She non-judgmentally shared some important insights and I plan to incorporate a few of her activities and strategies in our family. It was the impeccable timing of my children's actions coupled with her delivery that elicited my comments, not her message itself. The speaker and her husband have always been exceptionally loving towards my kids and greet them by name every week with a smile.