Ah… valentine’s day in the Bahamas. What could be better? Hopefully, it’s not raining like the weather forecast was calling for as I wrote this last week. But even if it is, I’m still in the Bahamas. On vacation. Learning that there is life outside of children.
You might find it odd that I say that but kids are my life. Between our four, did you also know that I’m the nursery director at church? Every Sunday morning, I’m playing with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. During the Summer I’m volunteering or leading a few vacation Bible Schools and I also work with the youth… so my life revolves around kids.
Did I mention there are NO children on this boat?
Kids weren’t as huge in my life five years ago. In fact, unless they were mine, I wasn’t overly fond of them….
My how God changes things…
Here’s day two of my five part series….
Originally posted May 27, 2008
And so my quest for the perfect Episcopal Church began….
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I really did try to find a church. I went a few times, but never found one that we wanted to call home… even though, looking back, many opportunities were put in front of me. There was the church that offered line dance lessons where the people were really nice.
There was the church that a few of the scout families went to and they were really nice too.
There was the church that was just down the street, as in we could walk there, and they were nice.
In fact, I only found one church that wasn’t nice and I say this only because they were very clear in their bulletin that they would not tolerate children making any kind of noise during the service. I didn’t know much about God at that time, but I was pretty sure he loved ALL the little children, even the noisy ones… but if they wanted a quiet church, there was no way that I could bring Samara with me.
I don’t know what it was about any of them other than that they were missing something. I just didn’t want to be there. I didn’t FEEL anything and felt that I was forcing myself to be there… just to say that I was there. In my mind, I wasn’t going to do something just to do something. So I just didn’t go.
Eleven months after I moved to Richmond, I felt this need to come “home”. Home is such a funny word for me to use since I’m an Army Brat. My parents were no longer in Roanoke, but things just weren’t working out there. That and I met the man that I knew I was going to marry… but he lived here and I didn’t.
So, I moved back to Roanoke and again attempted to find a church home. We attended a few but then would get lax about going and then would feel embarrassed about returning. In an effort to make a commitment to going to church, Matthew made his First Communion and became an Acolyte.
I thought this new level of accountability was just what we needed however, we ended up only going on the Sunday’s that he served and then I would get perturbed because every time we went, someone would welcome me to the church, thinking that I was a visitor. I guess in their minds, I was… but in my mind, I desperately wanted someone to remember me, to know me, to be glad to see me each and every Sunday morning.
And of course, the kids didn’t like that church because Sunday School overlapped with Coffee Hour where the good food was and by the time they were released, it was all gone.
I’ll admit it…I gave up on finding a church because my life was a train wreck and all I wanted to do was sleep. There was no way that I was getting out of my bed on a Sunday when I could lay there and wallow in self pity.
That man that I was convinced I was going to marry? Almost three years we were no longer an item. He moved out.
My father had just broken his three-year silence with me.
My children told me that I was never there for them.
My life was falling apart.
