This photo was taken on a Sunday morning, right before I ran to break up the sibling silliness. Ah, Sundays with three kids. If I round the corner to the bathroom to find Devon swilling last night's discarded diaper in the toilet, yep, it's Sunday morning. If he then shot puts that diaper into the knee of my good pants so it can slither messily all the way down to my ankle, that's just par for the course.
It doesn't matter. Now that the girls are old enough, we go to church as a family. The first time we attempted this I was up before 7 for a three hour mad dash that I was sure I would never have the energy to repeat again. The second time, it only took an hour and wasn't so bad. Now getting three kids bathed, fed, into matching clothes, and buckled into the car seats is routine. It doesn't even faze me, although it could explain the carpal tunnel pain I sometimes have on Mondays.
I'm sure our fellow churchgoers from California and Kentucky might raise an eyebrow as to our choice of a new church home, having correctly guessed that we are used to an ultra-traditional, fourth-verse-in-the-hymnal type of service. However, from the first week we attended First Church of God we haven't attended anywhere else. You could say we let our kids pick our church for us, since all three are fully comfortable in the children's area and I haven't been paged in months. I agree that I'm a big fan of competent church childcare since it gives me the only three hours a week I'm not responsible for three kids, but that isn't all of it.
It's partly that we respect the pastor, who takes a firm stand on moral issues even though the local media occasionally vilifies him for it. It's also the way people have sought us out and befriended us even though we're (ahem!) a little on the quiet side and sometimes find it hard to make friends. Groucho Marx didn't want to be a part of any club that would accept him as a member, but Craig and I would rather find a church where people act like we feel Christians should act. Hopefully, their loving and welcoming spirit will challenge us to do likewise. If everyone in a church smiled shyly and couldn't think of anything to say to start a conversation, a pattern that we occasionally fall back into, that would be a pretty quiet church!
Here are Carrie and Melina at five months, dressed up and perched in the Bumbos getting ready for their first trip to church. Carrie and Melina love being dressed up. I really enjoy it, too. Part of me wonders why children's clothing companies make so many cute baby shoes that don't stay on, or why I iron two baby dresses so they can be stretched around my wiggly babies and then crammed into the car seats.
I mentally give every Sunday a theme:
Flapper Sunday
Jean Jumper Sunday
Matchy-Matchy Sunday
Carrie and Melina are too little to feel insecure at being dropped off, so they coo and smile at their teachers. If it's a slow day, it's not uncommon for us to walk past the window on the way to the service and glance into the baby room to see four or five people in a semicircle around them, watching intently as Carrie and Melina pull up on a chair and slowly reach for the same toy.
Going to a new church after the move has been more of an adjustment for Devon. We're just getting over a few months of him crying foul for five minutes after being dropped off. I credit his new excitement about church to his favorite teacher, Miss Alyssa. Now Devon amuses himself on the drive to church by telling me what he and Miss Alyssa are going to do in the childcare that day-- or maybe what he would like to do?
"Missawissa and Dawon eatin' a pizza!"
"Whatcha doin', Missawissa? No more pickles! Pickles all gone!"
"Missawissa! Achoo! Bless you, Missawissa!"
"Missawissa and Dawon on a mokkacycle, eatin' a pizza! Get the stroller! Go to the beach! Go to the beach! Go to the beach! Missawissa!"
We're trying to introduce the idea that church is where we go to spend time with Jesus. In the meantime, Devon sees the love of Jesus demonstrated by the people at church, and that makes him happy. I'm sure a small part of Devon remembers his beloved Bible Study Ladies (as we called them), the child care workers that pampered and spoiled him while Mommy enjoyed using her brain for two hours each Wednesday morning while I was pregnant with Carrie and Melina.
Part of me is sad that the kids won't grow up going to Porter Memorial, our old church in Lexington. Craig still refers to our first Fourth of July Sunday at Porter as "The Day that Krista Got Religion."
Craig and I were sitting in the service enjoying the typical patriotic/religious themed music. For the finale, the choir began to sing the official songs of each branch of the military and veterans were invited to stand up in turn and be recognized by the congregation. I'd heard it just about every year, so I'm sure my mind was beginning to stray to Sunday dinner and our relaxing afternoon.
Suddenly, the music was drowned out by a huge boom, causing me to throw my arms up over my head in the full-body startle that Melina probably gets from me. It sounded like a bomb had gone off in the parking lot, or at least an unexpected tornado had touched down. I cowered in the pew, smelling smoke and wondering if we'd get out of the building alive.
It gradually dawned on me that nobody was running and screaming. I opened by eyes to see a pyrotechnics display that Porter must have borrowed from nearby Rupp Arena: confetti raining down from the top of the sanctuary and dozens of sparklers showering yard-high fountains of color down over the choir and orchestra on the platform. I'm sure the impact of the event was mostly because it was so utterly unexpected, but it took fifteen minutes for my heart rate to slow to normal.
Now that we have kids, I'm kind of glad we're going to miss the yearly indoor fireworks, which were loud enough to startle the babies in the nursery.
It's interesting for us to be the family with "all those kids" after being the only couple in Sunday School with no kids, like we were at Ripon Grace where we attended church as newlyweds in California. One of the reasons that we picked our current church was the friendly atmosphere that reminded us of our old friends there.
The only thing that puzzled us about Ripon Grace was Foot Washing. Since Craig and I were both raised Baptist, we grew up exposed to a pretty short list of what one does in church. I remember when the late nineties and more demonstrative worship styles hit and everyone was shocked to realize Yes, it is okay to raise one's arms in church!!! There was no dancing at our church wedding. The only alcohol at our wedding was bought at the liquor store across the street (it's a downtown church) and smuggled in by a cousin to spike the punch of everyone at his table. Sure, we had experiences in college camp where people were invited to wash the feet of a friend to demonstrate love and service, but when Pastor announced when communion service would be that week and that everyone would take part in foot washing as part of it, we were unsure how to proceed.
We decided to skip that one and wait a while. Later, I heard about all the women getting Saturday night pedicures. Then, when their friends had to wash their feet, they'd expose their pretty painted toes to receive a symbol of Christ's service for us and our service to others. As a few more weeks went by I forgot all about foot washing. I was on summer break and coping with Craig's hideous summer harvest schedule by refinishing all the woodwork in our seventies-style house. That meant that both of us were working fourteen hour days and had little time to contemplate individualities of church tradition.
One Saturday night I finished up the day's work and set to making myself presentable for the service the next morning. I'd been working on the cabinet doors, using messy wood stain that often dripped on me, running down and making puddles on the ground that I couldn't avoid stepping in. I was polka-dotted all over by oily, dark brown spots. Removing it from my face, neck, hair, and forearms took over an hour. I decided to stop there, wear long pants and closed-toed shoes to church the next morning, and save all-over decontamination for when the cabinets were done and I was ready to go back to school.
Imagine my surprise when Craig and I took our seats and looked in the bulletin to discover that communion service was that Sunday. I cringed, thinking of the dried tracks of stain that dotted my ankles and the dark brown nastiness of the bottoms of my feet. I was hoping that Pastor would go right to the bread and the cup and skip the foot washing. No, he began the service by saying that foot washing was not only a symbol of service to others. It was also a symbol of exposing our own secret sin to other members of the congregation so that we could be supported in prayer.
You have no idea what secrets I'm going to be exposing pretty soon! I imagined calmly wiping the sparkly-toed, callus-free feet of a fellow churchgoer before ripping off my shoes and socks and-- I didn't know what to do. Pastor Shirk's remarks were winding down and in only a few moments my time would be up.
"Okay, folks, we'll be heading out of the sanctuary where we're all set up to participate in the foot washing part of the service. Ladies go to the right to the Fellowship Hall, gentlemen to the Sunday School rooms on the left." I breathed a sigh of relief. As we filed out with the rest of the congration who obeyed the pastor's instructions, I grabbed Craig's arm and we shot straight out the back door!!!
I have to admit that I didn't fully appreciate going to church before we had kids. I look back on a few times when I was tired from a long work week and used the old "Bedside Baptist" joke, or when Craig took our only car to do research on Sunday and I stayed home even though a service was a ten minute walk away.
During the last trimester of my high-risk pregnancy and the first few months of having vulnerable babies and no child care I really missed going to church. Many thoughtful people brought fellowship to us by bringing us meals and making sure that we had enough help while moving. Five different pastors from Porter looked in on me and the girls when we were in the hospital, and I'm sure at least one regretted it because I was too tired to correctly fasten my hospital gown and too medicated to care.
Now that we're back in church every week, something's different.
As the music starts up and we sing the opening song, I can't stop the tears that drip slowly down my face.
I repeat over and over to myself: We are a family and we've come to church. I have three kids and they're all with me in church.
I can't wait to bring on VBS and foam board Sunday School stories and "Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man" and fish crackers for snack and memory verses and Awana and...
I feel like for the first time in my life I truly comprehend Psalm 122:1: "I was glad when they said unto me, let us go unto the house of the Lord."
I'm more than just glad.
It's the biggest high I get all week.
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