Liking Church

It happens every single week. By this time, I always know what's coming so I start dreading it by Friday. It was particularly depressing that my birthday coincided with it this year.

I'm talking about Sunday, of course.

Most parents of young children find Sundays stressful, but for the past two or three years I've actively disliked the day. My role at church can be described in brief as "kid-keeper." And when the kids are unruly, not to mention disliking church themselves, church simply becomes a reminder of the fultility and failure that my parenting is.

"There are techniques for training your children to sit in church with you," I was told once. It was an unhelpful remark, because by that time I myself didn't want to sit in church, much less with three children. It wasn't that I didn't try to keep them still and quiet, anyway. But Sunday after Sunday I left church discouraged and frustrated. The occasional Sundays when someone "spoke" to me or Darren about the children were especially dark.

I sit in the pew thinking, "What's the point of all this?" and at the same time grieving that Stuart, especially, knows how to sit quiet and bored throughout the service. How can it be worth making your children participate in service when they end up hating it by age six? Age six to thirty-two, for that matter.

A combination of incidents recently helped jar my thoughts to a new track. Said incidents, which I won't detail, have been pretty painful. We met to resolve the conflict with the other party; it went well at the time, but the aftermath was a horrible all-night and next-day processing that left me sleep-deprived and angry.

Then, as I expected, my mind suddenly sifted through everything and settled down. I realized the next evening that I wasn't chewing over the problem anymore. At the same time, I started reading a book called "Parenting in the Pew." The book was full of the same advice I'd heard over and over at church. But it wasn't in direct relation to my own children, and I was finally able to hear what was actually being said.

Of course I hated Sundays. Who in the world enjoys taking three kids to a weekly meeting where all you do is "sit quietly"? Not only was I trying to get them to sit quietly, that's what I was doing, too. And church doesn't exist just for being quiet. We go to church to worship. The problem wasn't how my children behaved, or how good a parent I wasn't, but that I've forgotten how to worship.

(There are lots of other issues wrapped up in this one, which I probably won't put on the blog. I'm actually surprised this one made it past my reflexive privacy-and-must-look-put-together instinct.)

This week, I sat Addie and Stuart down at the table and told them that I wanted to do Sundays differently. "Daddy loves Sundays. But we three don't. So I want us to learn how to be excited about Sundays." I've been going through the service with them, explaining why we do each part. I made up cards with each of this Sunday's Scripture references on them -- in code! -- so we can look them up and be familiar with the readings ahead of time.

And Addie and Stuart have responded excitedly! Happily! They want to love church! Ha! I'm making that up completely! They slouch in their chairs, sigh, groan, and tune me out. But I've caught a glimmer of interest now and then; they do like parts of church, and I think they're captivated by the thought that Mama needs to learn as much as they do.

I expect Sundays to be as tiring as they ever were. I expect Stuart to get surly now and then and Addie to have meltdowns. What I hope to expect, however, is that my focus will be different, which means my spirit will be lighter, which means that maybe some Sunday I really will like church.

-- SJ