Yeah, well, this week that just didn't happen.
I have a few excuses I can run by you, like: stock show season is upon us, and we had the district steer show this week, and soccer season is starting, and I had two girls to get to practices, and for some reason I'm about three years behind on laundry, and it snowed...again!, and on Saturday we went to my mom and dad's to help clean up for their bull sale, and I ended up with this SPOT under my arm that was really itchy and might have been a bite or something because my whole body started itching, but when my mom saw it, she said STAFF INFECTION, and then I got REALLY ITCHY and paranoid, and had to go home and take Benadryl and sleep for like 15 hours, so......it just didn't happen.
I had made no plan for church earlier in the week, and in all honesty, I can't even remember praying about it, which is my usual decision-making key, so we woke up Sunday morning with no idea where to go to church, and only a vague plan of making it back to my parents' around noon to help again and pick up our oldest daughter who had stayed the night. However, knowing there are a number of churches between our house and my parents' an hour away, I encouraged (yelled at) everyone to prepare themselves (Get something on! I don't care what! Just don't look stupid!), and we glided gracefully (sweating and griping with only half a face of make-up on) into the car just in time to be too late to attend most of the churches we'd had in mind.
Feeling hopeful (or at least pretending I did), I began Google searching churches in the Fairview/Seiling area but discovered (surprise, surprise) that many of these little country churches don't have websites.
"Oh, well," we thought, "We'll just look at the signs when we drive by and find one getting ready to start."
Why, oh, why can't ALL church signs list their starting times?! We passed by church after church with cars parked outside because we had no idea if they were just getting started or had been there an hour and were about to leave. Believe me, when you're about to enter a church you've never been to before with a family you've no hope of slipping unnoticed into a back pew with, you'd really like to avoid the absolute embarrassment of arriving at the end of the service.... or even just 10 minutes late.
So, we decided to just drive on into Seiling and maybe attend church with some friends of ours...who unusually for them, ended up not attending that Sunday, and the church had started about 5 minutes before we arrived....uhm, moving on. We began driving the streets of Seiling, and when we noticed some cars pulling up in front of a church down the street, we thought surely we'd found one that hadn't started yet. BINGO! It even had a sign stating that the starting time was 10:50 am (of all times)! We were even a few minutes early. So, Seiling United Methodist Church it was! Halleluiah! God had provided a place for us to worship! And a place to bless our morning efforts.
The Seiling United Methodist Church actually holds a pretty special place in my heart. It was the church my parents were married in, and a place where I was called to speak as a lay speaker on a special Sunday many years ago. It had to have been about 10 years ago, but I remember it was on July 10th because it was our anniversary, and I talked about how much of the advice we'd been given before our wedding could apply to our positions as the bride of Christ. I also recall that our adorable first-born toddler-aged daughter let out a silent-but-deadly just before it was my turn to speak and then shouted " 'Scuse me!" to the people behind and to either side of us. (Too much information? Sorry. Those are the kind of things that give parents the right to embarrass their children as teenagers. )
Anyway, we were excited to see our friends, the Gammons, come in behind us to make us feel right at home, and enjoyed making the acquaintance of the church's new pastor, Reverend Norm Wasson, before taking our seats in the beautiful stain-glass bedecked sanctuary.
Our two younger girls (the only children in the church until the arrival of the Gammons' darling little grandson) were excited to see coloring books and crayons provided for them at the entrance, and immediately settled in (after arguing over who got which book, changing seating positions several times, and deciding they needed the colored pencils out of my purse instead of the crayons provided) and began coloring on what I soon discovered in the hands of my 5 year old was the loudest coloring book in the history of coloring books. I don't understand why, but somehow every page turned and swipe of the crayon reverberated throughout the church until I was certain I would lose my mind and no one would possibly be able to hear the sermon. Finally, I caved in and asked her to do something I never allow....Please! For goodness sakes! Get under the pew! She was happy to oblige. And bump her head. And hit her heals on the pew in front of us. Oh, please! My nerves were seriously shot, and the service had barely even begun.
Finally, I realized how unproductive my anxiety was, took a deep breath, sighed out a prayer for deliverance, and focused on our purpose for being with this body of Christ on this special morning. It was time to worship. Time to let go of the stress-filled week behind me, forgive myself for my lack of preparation and dedication, and focus on my Creator. Time to give myself over to the One who loves me; not just despite of or through my faults, but even because of them. Because of the lessons I'm learning through them, because they are a part of the person He created me to be, and because I am perfectly and wonderfully made.
The music began, and I gave myself up to worship through the words and familiar tunes of hundred year old hymns. I reveled in the lessons found in Reverend Wasson's sermon entitled, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain," and found my excitement for our Steeple Chase renewed as we studied the calling of Abram and Sarai into the wilderness and were reminded that while we may at times find ourselves feeling lonely and scared and without a mapped out plan to guide us, with faith and God we will get to the other side and receive the blessings God has promised.
As the service ended, we were touched by the number of members who introduced themselves and made us feel welcome in their lovely church home. The smiling faces exuded years of faith and dedication to the Body that God led us to that Sunday morning, and we feel privileged to have had the opportunity to worship among them on our Steeple Chase this week. It just goes to show that regardless of our preparations (or lack there of), it truly is God guiding us on this journey, and He knows the plans He has for us (so saith the Lord!)
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