So after a rare late night out for me I reluctantly dragged my two children to church alone. (I hope golfing was fun guys.) We hadn't been in 3 weeks and the guilt was setting in. (And the underlying meaning from RoRo's question, "How was church?" when she knew I hadn't gone was getting annoying. Love you mom, but I'm on to you.) Now let me preface this by letting those of you who don't sit in church with me and my family that it isn't a very calm, relaxing, or quiet experience. Zac has no concept of whisper and Claire feels strongly about using the damn pencils in the back of the pew to write on everything. They usually sprint down the aisle and choose a seat that I don't want them in and I have to quietly shoot them dirty looks and beg them to move where I need them to be.
So, this Sunday I walk in and immediately run into the children's choir director who asks me to sing with the "family" choir and hands me music. I mentioned I didn't have anyone to watch my kids and she tells me they can stand up there with me. Obviously she doesn't know my kids. Well to my surprise, this went well. A friend held Claire and sang and I held all 45 lbs of Zac. (He only covered up my mouth once while I was singing. Oh so cute.) By now I am only sweating a little.
When we get back to the pew, I calmly settle both children in and they are actually being great. Then they call for the chidren's sermon. So we are up once again and Zac decides to sit way over on the side where he can't see or hear anything. So cute again. I smile through gritted teeth and pretend to listen attentively to the sermon about communion. They call all the kids up to the communion table and after everyone is already gathered around Zac decides to join the group. I glance at the congregation to see a variety of different faces. Some with smiles, some with pity, and some totally annoyed. Oh well. Now I am in a full sweat and feel like passing out. (Could be the beer from the night before?)
We go to the pew and now it is time for communion. I am alone in the pew with Zac on my left and Claire on my right in the second row. We start reading this extremely long testimony about communion when Zac starts not whispering that he is hungry and when can he go to church school. I tell him that he is going to get to eat bread and drink juice. He got so excited. So I went with it. I then tell him that this is called communion and it is an important thing we get to do at church. "I've never done it."
"Well today is your first time. The bread represents Jesus' body and the juice is his blood." I say this while trying to think of a great way to explain the whole thing and nothing fabulous is coming out of my mouth.The bread comes and Claire pinches a little piece of bread for herself, I get mine, and Zac pinches a tiny piece. He seriously almost cries because my piece is bigger so I quickly traded with him to avoid any drama. Now Claire starts eating hers and decides she's thirsty. She is very self sufficient so she opened up my purse to get her own sippy cup. I look at Zac and he is rolling his bread into a ball and he says, "Is this Jesus' skin?"
I didn't quite know what to say. "Well yeah, we are pretending it is."
He looked at his bread and said, "I'm going to save it and drink it with the blood."
"It isn't real blood Zac. We are just pretending it is. It's grape juice."
"Well I'm going to call it blood!"
Whatever. The blood, I mean juice, comes and all is well. Claire starts chewing her cup and it splits open to create a very loud echo in the sanctuary. Then the choir starts singing. Zac says, "Now are they singing about Jesus?"I truly couldn't understand what they were singing about but I just told him yes.
With that, we were dismissed to church school. After drop off I came back to sit through the rest of the service. I have no idea what the sermon was about. I was coming down from our first communion high. :)
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