This Sunday Alden woke up especially clingy, and even while at home, would not let me set him down. He had his hand in his mouth and I assume it was some sort of teething thing.
But it meant that when we got to church, he also wasn't letting me set him down. Which is fine. Some mornings he will gladly go into the church nursery, and other mornings he makes it very clear by body lunging away from that side of the hall, that he is not going in there. But our church is gracious and usually we can be in the service at least during the singing.
And then there is the cry room that has a feed of the service for moms and dads to watch while their kids play. Lately, that's where Alden and I spend most of our morning.
And it's a funny mind game. Immediately I want to feel sorry for myself (I should say that Rory takes his turn as well, but often he is volunteering in the service as an usher, so he can't really leave as easily) and there is a devious voice that sneaks in and wonders why we made the effort to get to church anyway. Afterall, I could just watch this same service at home, with a sleeping Alden in his crib, instead of sitting on the floor, playing fire trucks, feeding the needy child donut holes and catching every forth sentence.
But I caught myself this past Sunday. I made myself list all of the conversations I had during Fellowship Hour. And some of them were very meaningful to me. And then after service we stayed a long time (we are the folks who tend to close the place down...a genetic trait we both got from our own parents) and I had a few more great conversations.
On the drive home I realized I had two VERY TRUE stories I could have reported to Rory from my morning. The first was the pity party story of sitting in that back room with a fussy Alden, feeling tired and exhausted (likely from the donut holes I was sugar crashing on). The second was the connection I had with so-and-so before church and the life-giving talk I had with so-and-so after church. And I decided in the moment to tell the second story because I would have missed out on those meaningful connections if I had stayed home and watched in my pajamas.
The other story from the morning: After sitting in the cry room for a while I told Alden we could go see Daddy in church if he was very quiet and colored next to me. He said, "Yaasss." That he did want to do that. So we walked back into our spots, sat down and just then our pastor began talking about Peter. And everytime he said "Peter" Alden would yell, "Pizza! Pizza!" I tried to shush him, give him a cracker, distract him, but he was very interested in the sermon now, waiting for Pastor Brent to say the buzz word again. He did, and Alden excitedly yelled, "Pizza!" again, and then I had to take the walk of shame (not really, but you if you are a mom who has already exited the church with a noisy child, and have to do it again...it definitely feels this way!) back through all the church, back into the cry room to play firetrucks with Alden.
And likely if we asked Alden, he would say his favorite part of the morning was playing fire trucks with his mom on the floor.
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