Practicing Sunday Morning

Last night my husband and I took our three boys to church to practice for Sunday morning. There's no special performance; we were just practicing the usual Sunday morning procedure.

Sunday school started last week. We went to church for fellowship time (eating and talking) which is followed immediately by classes. When it was time to take the kids to their classes, my 5-year-old had disappeared. I walked all around the building looking for him and 10 minutes later saw him in the hallway crying with his preschool teacher. He didn't want to go to class and so hid in his preschool cubby.

My husband could tell something was wrong because he saw me searching and looking worried but he was starting class for the adults and couldn't help me parent. He would help if I asked but this kind of thing happens nearly every week.

So for practice we sat in the sanctuary and talked about the parts of the worship service. They were most interested in talking about the offering and what poor people might buy with the money we give them. I didn't tell them yet that we are the poor people benefiting from the offering. Then we practiced waiting for Mom before leaving the sanctuary and walking down the hallway and telling Mom before you leave a room.

Looking forward to seeing if anything goes more smoothly tomorrow.

How have you helped your kids learn how to behave at church?

When Church Makes You Crazy: 5 Strategies

We spent a couple of years at a church that literally made me crazy. The church leaders abused my husband and I felt scared every time I went in the building. The stress of that situation caused an episode of clinical depression that persisted until we moved away.

While we were there, I found a few strategies to help me cope with the situation. Mostly I wanted to never go to or think about that church, but I felt that I had a few obligations as the pastor's wife:

1. Attend worship most weeks.
2. Bring my children to Sunday school. (This one had more to do with stability for my children than obligations to the church.)
3. Speak kindly always. Speak of church politics as little as possible.

Given those parameters, I found about five things I could do that helped. I'll tell you about one of them today and describe the others during the rest of the week.

Coping Strategy #1: Worship Elsewhere. I went to our church on Sunday mornings because I believe it can be confusing and discouraging for the congregation if the pastor's wife never attends. I barely considered it "worship" in the true sense. I didn't hear the senior pastor's sermons as messages from God but as reminders of his duplicity. Every hymn and prayer was clouded by my stress and anxiety.

I visited other churches as I was able, usually on a weeknight. It was such a relief to sit in the pew and feel like I had some privacy with God. Even in a happy church I feel self-conscious about being the woman everyone can identify.

Eventually I built a relationship with a nearby church (I'll call it "Bridge Church") where I attended a weekday Bible study and made a few friends. During the months after my husband had left our last church and before he took the call to our current church, we attended Bridge Church. In retrospect, I would say that was an important part of my re-learning how to feel safe at church. I think most of our friends at Bridge Church knew something had gone terribly wrong for us. I never felt judged, no one ever pried into details. We were welcomed, hugged, made to feel loved and valued.

The pastor at Bridge Church advised me to "do nothing." He told me we needed time to heal and to receive love and care with no obligations. He was right about that and it was a precious gift.

Backstory

Now that we are in a church where my husband is the only pastor, I am discovering a new burr in my pastor's wife vest: every sermon and every Bible class comes with baggage. I often know what happened this week that inspired the particular angle he takes on the scripture reading. Sometimes he's funny or off-beat and other people think he is so witty and I think I've heard this story/joke a dozen times before.

It's like being at a dinner party where your spouse is amusing and surprising everyone else and it's old hat to you. A dinner party every Sunday morning. He is funny and smart and witty. I'm glad other people appreciate his creativity. But some days I am very aware of the drawbacks to being married to the preacher.

Do any of you pw's have the same feeling?

Easter Worship

I didn't make it to church this morning.

That's not a confession, it's a lament. It's a miserable irony of depression that the things I want most are the most difficult to do--sometimes they seem impossible. The good I want to do I do not do...

I absolutely planned to go this morning. I'd talked to the kids about it and checked on whether the nursery would be available. Then I woke up this morning with visions of my impatient children, overflow crowds, and all that holiday hullabaloo that can feel so lonesome.

Yuck. This is such crap. I kind of feel like I've missed out on the most important day of the year.

Sunday

Going to a new church is making me realize just how much I have hated going to church lately. En route yesterday my kids were acting crazy in the car, and I remembered how that used to put me over the edge on Sunday morning. Yesterday, it seemed fine and I knew they'd quit as soon as they unbuckled.

At our new church, lots of people smile and shake my hand and it's easy for me to say, "I'm new here. Could you tell me where to find...? How to ...?" There is a kids' church during the sermon, so we found the person who manages that and she showed us how it all works. When it was time for them to leave the service, my kids just got up and followed everyone else and were happy as could be.

The sermon addressed, in part, our identity. Does your identity rest in Christ, or in obedience, or right doctrine, etc. I tried to apply this only to myself, but my mind kept wandering to sr. pastor. My experience of him suggests that his identity is in something like being right. Technically speaking, that's not my concern anymore since I don't need to see him. But it is very hard to stop judging him.

Thankfully, there was also confession & absolution during the service.

Fruit of the Spirit

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious...hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy... But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:19-23)

Good things have happened in the last week. Sunday I attended a new church. I think “our church” is now “my former church.” What a relief. For the first time in months, I listened to the sermon without meditating on the failings of sr. pastor. I heard God talking to me about Himself and me.

Here’s what I heard: you are not bearing the fruit of the Spirit, mp, you are bearing the fruit of you. Nursing anger and wishing for disharmony at your former congregation comes from you. Let Me live in you, and I will fill your heart with love, peace, and patience.

Ouch. And thank you. And let me think on that.

**************

Evenings tend to be difficult for me. Along about 9:00, the kids have been in bed for a while and I can feel pretty blue. I settle on an old recording of unhappy thoughts -- what if? why didn’t he? why us? will this ever be over? Urgent to escape that unpleasantness, I take a moment to select some distraction: eat something (good feelings), watch tv (mind numbing), read a Psalm (reassurance), go to bed (escape). Of these, reading a Psalm is the one that takes a fair bit of discipline. I do not choose it most often because it doesn’t involve escape. Praying = thinking & feeling, two things I’m basically trying to avoid.

Last night, as it happens, I made it through Psalm 37. It was reassuring, challenging, painful & hopeful. Am I the only one who finds this difficult?

Stress Contagion

The last several weeks have not gone smoothly for me at church. A series of problems involving the kids -- sickness, tears and pleas for me to stay in Sunday school, multiplied misbehavior during worship -- has disrupted my plan every week.

I am an excessively self-aware parent. I regularly evaluate my own behavior and attitudes and try to decipher how I am affecting my children. I have purposely avoided analyzing our Sunday morning misadventures. There are so many reasonable explanations: they are young, there are three of them, it is winter, they are tired, I am tired.

I'm losing patience with these explanations, though. I'm pretty sure the stress I feel on Sunday is getting them wound up. I don't have any idea what I might do about it. Sunday is stressful. I want desperately to be at church and to be glad I'm there. No matter what I pray, or read, or try to think about during worship, the underlying conflict erupts somewhere.

The weeks ahead promise to be more complicated than the last few months. We are developing plans to move away from this situation and transition brings anxiety and conflict up from the locked closet in the basement.

This week someone reminded me of how "late" Jesus was when his dear friend Lazarus became sick. Lazarus was dead by the time Jesus got there. If Jesus had shown up when people thought he should, then the miracle of Lazarus' resurrection would not have happened. I cannot fix my Sunday morning stress, but I can try to be patient and trust God for the outcome.

This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it. John 11:4

A Forgiving Community

I've been following the Church Whisperer blog, which deals with church conflict, and this post particularly struck me. It's a meditation on Luke 7:41-47, in which Jesus explains the connection between being forgiven and forgiving. The kind of transparency and humility he describes is exactly what I crave in a congregation.

Christmas Debrief

Christmas was, in some ways, much better than I expected. There was a very content day when all the kids were home, my husband was around quite a bit, and everyone was glad to be together. I enjoyed that very much and was particularly thankful for it because contentment has become rare.

Christmas morning was weepy for me. The kids were excited and happy and I realized that I did not feel any of the particular excitement or pleasure I associate with the holiday. Being sad when I specifically expect to be happy is more miserable than the everyday sadness to which I've become accustomed.

I also didn't make it to church on Christmas Eve or Day. I had expected to, but in each case it just seemed too overwhelming to rally the kids and deal with the hubbub of a holiday worship service. Do other clergy families feel that way? I find Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter the most difficult times to go to church. It seems like everyone else is there en route to some sort of family event, while my husband is working and I am alone in the pew with three kids. I don't generally resent that this is my life, but I feel out of place at church on those days.

In Which I Question the Reliability of God

Last Sunday surprised me. On the way to the worship service, my son whined “I don’t wanna go to church!” I answered, without premeditation, “Really? I’m excited to go to church.” I don’t when I last had that feeling. Sitting in the pew, I felt glad to be there. I could see Mrs. Sr. Pastor several rows in front of me, and I was glad for her to be there, too.

During the first portion of the service, I kept thinking of how God seemed to have changed my heart. Somehow, He had prepared me to look at things differently even though not much has changed.

Then the sermon. Oh, my. It was not offensive in, it just seemed empty. It seemed like this to me:

Today, I am going to talk to you about red bricks, yellow bricks, and blue bricks. In the Bible, there are five red bricks. I will read you every passage that mentions them. There are four yellow bricks in the Bible. Here are the passages that mention them. Blue bricks are mentioned four times. Let’s read a blue brick passage together. All three bricks are important. God made them all.

It struck me as a series of textual observations with no meaningful interpretation.

Then, later in the service, the congregation was asked to fill out a survey. The survey is intended to measure something about how involved we are in volunteer service. Seriously? During worship? I hate that survey. I have absolutely nothing to write on it, and looking at it makes me feel worthless. Generally, I understand that I am in a time in my life when structured involvement with anything outside my own family is limited. God is with me here, my life is meaningful and purposeful. But none of my life fits on this form, so I look like nothing there.

WHY? Why would God change my heart and then leave me hanging like that? It looks like poor follow-through.