Pardon our Progress...

A few Sundays ago, I was standing in the foyer of our church (read: Letting Luke and Josie blow off a little steam between Sunday School and worship.) when one of our elders stopped me. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and told me how much he appreciated seeing the kids at Bible class and worship each week. He said having them at church encouraged him, and he just wanted to make sure that we knew it.

And as I sat down in our family's pew to get ready for worship to begin, I welled up. My throat got thick and suddenly it was hard to swallow. My eyes burned as they filled with tears because I realized he knew. He got it. He remembered what it was like when his children were little.  His thoughtful words were just the encouragement I needed to prepare me to face the challenges that inevitably arise when have a young family of 5 crowded onto a pew.

Going to church is hard work. Don't get me wrong, Sundays and Wednesdays are good days: they're filled with worship and learning and fellowship and friends and children and laughter- but they're also the most exhausting days of the week. They're filled equally with sweat and stress and shushes and 'be quiets' and whispers and power struggles and trips to the foyer for "talks" with Mom or Dad. 

And if you've ever experienced a church service as a mother, you understand. You understand the flushed feeling you get when you're desperately trying to soothe a fussy, teething baby who only wants to cry in the middle of a prayer. You know the heat that overtakes your entire body as you escort your screaming two year old through the back doors of the sanctuary to discipline them for repeatedly attempting to stand up/lie down/undress/karate chop their baby brother during the sermon. You've felt the humility that comes when you return from a bathroom trip with your three-and-a-half year old and they joyfully announce to everyone within a four pew radius that "Daddy! I-a pooped in the potty! I was bea honessst, see?!!" You can see how, after 90 minutes of antics like these, the closing prayer is the sweetest sound you've ever heard because it means that you've SURVIVED.

In between going through this never-ending revolving door with my crew, I'm spending the rest of the service explaining to them what it means to be in worship. I'm holding babies and blankets and Bibles. I'm reprimanding the unwanted behavior and rewarding the good. I'm teaching them to pray. To listen. To sing. To glorify Him. I am showing them what it means to be reverent. To be humble. To be forgiven. To be a child of His. And when they see their first baptism I tear up because I can't wait to have the privilege of seeing them make that Great Confession of their own one day. To be baptized into His body and to join me in a faith that is no longer one that they have through me, but one that they have made for themselves. 

So, when you hear some noise coming from my direction, please don't glare over your shoulder at us. If you think that the commotion from my pew sounded loud to you, I can assure you that it sounded much, MUCH louder to me. I can tell you that every squawk, every squirm, every squeal feels like a vise around my chest. There's a reason that we sit in the far back of the sanctuary and this is it. Did you know that as my baby cried, I sat on my pew analyzing the difference in the disruption that letting them continue to fuss would be versus the one I would cause by standing up and taking them out. That to me, every second my baby cries feels 5.3 times louder and longer than it actually is. Did you know that sometimes I just feel like a failure when my child tries to crawl under the pew in front of them? That some Sundays, I'm not sure if I should take communion when it is passed because I haven't had a chance to focus my heart and mind on it? So when you see me hauling one of them out through those double doors with a tight, forced smile, please don't sigh that I am out of my pew AGAIN. If it's been a particularly rough service and things just went terribly, please don't roll your eyes in our direction. Why don't you take that time to lift up a prayer for me? Stifle that sigh and send me a smile instead. Because that's when I'm in the thick of things, and a supportive look is just what I need to see. 

So please, give me some grace during these training years that I'm in. Give me some words of encouragement. Give me some hugs in the foyer after services are over. And please- pardon our progress. Building God's next generation can be loud, messy, Heaven-building work.