Monday, February 01, 2010

What happens when all your institutions fail

I recently blogged about how the more children you have the more 'programs' or 'institutions' you have to have to keep yourself afloat, just like with a church. However, sometimes everything breaks down and you spend the requisite amount of time preparing for your usual program/routine and nothing happens, or rather, Everything happens and breaks into pieces. Then you end up with a morning like ours yesterday.

2am Feed the baby
3am Feed the baby
3:15 am two children try to get out of their beds
4am Feed the baby, Matt gets up and goes to practice his sermon
5am Feed the baby, Matt stops practicing his sermon and copes with water in the church for the next hour and 45 minutes
6am Feed the baby, start muscling kids into clothes which ends up taking TWO HOURS, ruining your plan to be in the shower by 7.
7:45am All the children are dressed and ready to go except that you (by that I mean me) are still trying to blow dry your hair and find a big enough sweater to keep our the unrelenting and miserable cold (WHEN, I ask God, When will Global Warming finally make its appearance in Binghamton). On your way up from the basement at 7:47am you discover that the baby has thrown up on Elphine and they both need a complete change of clothes. Desperately redress them in less that a minute and a half. Everybody out the door (except you) by 7:51. You make it to church at 8:05 and miss the sermon Again but do pull your Sunday School lesson together by 9:15 while feeding the baby. The baby doesn't eat again until 1:06pm.

Fortunately, God is bigger than my tiny programs and plans and so church went off brilliantly (due largely to the fact that we had a delicious and fabulous international potluck after church AND the fact that I have a new Sunday School room AND the fact that we have a fabulous new choir director/organist who caused the choir to process for the first time since Christmas and sound lovely). Also, I just want to recommend the preaching of my excellent husband who has been preaching through Thessalonians for the last two months. His attention and care of the scriptures has been a comfort and strength to me personally. I find it extraordinary that I can be fed by his preaching Sunday after Sunday 1. because I know him and 2. because I generally read the sermon before he gives it.

And now, I'm going to go try to impose order on the basement/laundry room. Have a great afternoon.

2 comments:

punctuation without capitalization said...

i missed the international feast?

*grumbles*

Anonymous said...

I had heard about your new choir director and wondered when you would mention him. Right before we moved here to Syracuse our daughter and his son were in a production of Byebye Birdie. Can't remember his son's name for the life of me. Hope he works out for you.