Clergy Spouse Confessions

Most Sundays I've got the single parent in church thing down. Aunt Panasonic babysits Carolena while I get ready to leave the house. Carolena and I go to Sunday School and Nils happily plays in the nursery. We all manage to sit mostly quiet in our second from the front pew and there is usually only limited calling out "Daddy!" And, honestly, it reaaalllly helps that I have my "church wife" in the pew next to me each week.

But in honor of yesterday...

When you see me on a Sunday morning and I'm wearing a dark shirt with a hole directly over my light colored bra, it's because I didn't notice until arriving at church.

And because some days there isn't enough coffee to get us all out of the house on time and everyone well dressed in clothes that don't have mystery holes that seem to appear right when we get there. There just isn't enough coffee in the world.

When you see me on a Sunday morning and I'm ignoring my children as they crawl all over the back of the church and the three of us take up more than one entire pew and we have toys and books and cracker crumbs everywhere, it's because we are at church all of the time. In fact this might be our third time at church in as many days. We are insanely comfortable in God's house.

And some days I am just surviving.

When my children are giggling and making happy noises (or loud grunting noises as the case may be... Nils we're looking at you buddy...) and you glance over and I seem to not even notice the ruckus my family is making, know that I do notice. I just don't care. At least they aren't fighting or crying. You might mind the noise. I know I have in the past. But in present day I'm just thankful that I'm in the pew (or wandering around somewhere near it chasing a busy crawler). I'm thankful that we're there and I have to leave it at that.

When you see me on a Sunday morning and I am holding a 30lb baby on one hip, have a huge bag overflowing with toys on the other arm, and a three year old clinging to my leg (or running full speed ahead for the donuts), don't wonder why I look frazzled and tired. Please don't ask me a question about what time something starts or what the youth group might be doing at their next meeting. I don't know the answer. I never do.

When you see me on a Sunday morning and I seem distracted or tired or frazzled... it's because I am.

But we're there.

There was a time when I sat in the pews and enjoyed the quiet before the service. There was a time when I knelt during the confession, stood during the creed, and faced the gospel procession. I'd like to say there was a time when I arrived at church in a shirt without a hole but that's pushing it a bit too far, don't you think? It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Now my worship looks different. It takes the form of holding children and rocking babies. I worship standing more often than not because kneeling with a 10 month old is not feasible. I sing about half of each song but the half that I get to sing is sung loudly and joyfully... and my little grunting Nils sings along. The other half is spent wrangling cats my children and praying that none of us have to use the bathroom. The three of us in one stall is more than I can handle some days. I stand for the Eucharistic Prayer. The choices offered in the BCP are to kneel in penitence or stand in the joy of the Resurrection. At this point in my life, I choose joy. So I stand.

I realize that my kids and I are incredibly distracting in church. But, I'm doing the best I can. My worship is that we are there. Nils might not have shoes that fit, Carolena may have crazily ripped out her hairbraid in the middle of the service, and my shirt might have an unsightly hole... but we're there. My worship these days is about presence. When I say to Carolena, "It's Sunday. What do we do on Sundays?" and her resounding happy answer is to cheer, "church!" I know that our sometimes chaotic loud disruptive worship is in fact holy.