In January, our weekly starting time for church switched from 11:00 am to 9:00 am. Before kids I would have been disappointed in the change, as I've always enjoyed a nice and leisurely morning routine, but now I have kids, and whatever makes them easier- I'm happy about. Peter's nap time was right around 11:00 or 12:00 for most of last year, meaning that right around the time we would arrive at church, he would be ready for his nap. Between him being over tired, and having a new baby three months before he could start nursery so we had two babies to manage for three hours, church was rough.
Now that we've had 9 am church, Peter is in nursery, and Carolyn has been a generally easy and super smiley baby, church hasn't been too bad. Busy, but not something to dread.
Then today Carolyn woke up a little earlier than usual, so she was ready for her nap right about when church started. And yesterday Peter started to seem like he was getting a cold, and so today he was a little extra irritable and sensitive in the morning. By the time we were about 20 minutes into the meeting, either Marty or I had taken a child out to the foyer and back three times. A couple of minutes after being back in the pew again, Carolyn was done waiting for her nap and started getting really upset, so I headed out with her. Usually Peter doesn't care when I leave, but this time as I walked out the door I heard his explosive cry (I think he might have a future as an opera singer).
As I heard that cry I couldn't help but laugh. It was such a classic "why do I even bother to bring them to church?" moment. Marty came out into the foyer with Peter after a couple of unsuccessful minutes trying to get him to calm down in the chapel. We decided to stay out there for the remainder of the meeting. It was slightly better out there, but let's just say that I wasn't feeling any warm and fuzzies during this meeting. After that I took the kids home, because Peter was cranky and had a running nose, so I am assuming that he's getting a cold and the other parents in the nursery wouldn't want me to share with their kids.
I wish I had some wonderful moment to share with you, where I found some deep inner strength and had a beautiful spiritual experience after I brought them home. Nope. I was just happy to have a good excuse not to have to wrestle with them for two more hours.
Marty came home, and brought with him our neighbor's eleven year old daughter who has been staying with us this past week while her parents were out of town. She was asking me when we would be eating dinner, because today was fast Sunday. Then she commented to me that when she gets hungry she tries to focus harder on what she's fasting for and how her spirit is stronger than her body.
Well hello, humble pie. I hadn't even given much thought to my fast at that point. It was so easy to use my difficult children as an excuse not to be able to focus on spiritual things, and here she was reminding me about the capacity that our spiritual selves have to give us the strength to not be defeated by our physical discomforts and difficulties.
Having her around this last week has reminded me how as adults we get stuck in our ways of thinking and our habits and how we think we're seeing everything the right way, but how we often end up missing a lot of things that children can see so much more easily. I'm grateful for the wisdom that she didn't even know she was sharing with me.
Labels: Faith, Personal Growth