Yesterday, at a conference, I heard the most encouraging speaker, Bror Saxberg. Even better, his father introduced him with stories of his boyhood–how Bror never stopped talking, how his handwriting was awful (one day, he came home and said, “My teacher said my handwriting doesn’t matter because I am such a good talker!”), how he drove his mother nuts (my paraphrase) causing her to consider giving him to a passerby.
And we all laughed, perhaps in some relief. Perhaps our children, too, will grow up to be clever speakers and brilliant men with multiple degrees. Maybe we’ll survive this mess and noise after all!
Would you like a glimpse of the pastor’s wife on a Sunday morning? We finally left the house at 9:30 a.m.–me yelling at one boy, “FIND YOUR SHOE AND LET’S GO!” and him appearing in the car at last in a different pair of shabby sneakers. His missing shoe was in the car.
At church, I had to make copies of fliers. In my ongoing effort to recruit volunteers, I spent my free time last night creating the flier in question . . . but I’m sure I’ll end up having to make desperate telephone calls this week. During church, I made an announcement, then left the sanctuary to tape flags all around the lobby. The flags each listed a food item we need someone to donate. The idea is the people will take a flag, buy the item and return it.
By that point, my restless daughter wanted to go outside. I did not. She won and so I stood on the sidewalk while she pranced around a little. Then she strode toward the street. I called her back, but she was determined to go around the church to the back. In the back of the church, we used to have a play area, but now it’s just a giant dusty square full of pebbles. I did not want to go, but she whined and so I held her hand tightly and hurried her toward the back. “Fine,” I said, “You want to go? Fine! We’ll go!” I was angry.
She cried then and said, “I want to go home!” And I–on the edge of fury–said, “Fine! Let’s GO HOME!”
I marched back toward the front entrance of the church and she trailed behind me, wailing. I grabbed my purse and bag and rounded up my boys (who were watching the service on the television monitor) and off we went.
She still cried and I was still angry. We both settled down by the time we reached home. See? That’s what this pastor’s wife did today at church.
This afternoon, the boys wanted to experiment with a homemade water-slide on the play structure. I okayed it, but first I wanted to mow the grass which was terrifyingly tall. I barely started when our mower sputtered and died. I tried to restart it with no success.
So, then I decided to use my husband’s fancy new weed-eater to trim the scary tall edges of the yard. The orange string-thing that should have stuck out did not. It didn’t work, either.
I thought maybe the old lawn mower would work, so I dug through the disintegrating shed, dragged out the old mower, filled it with gas (my hands still stink) and started it (much to my shock). At last, I cut the grass. What should have taken ten minutes ended up taking an hour by the time I used one mower, then a malfunctioning weed-eater, then the old mower.
And it’s hot today! Really hot, especially for here. The temperature reached 90 degrees, I think. And there I was–while the gleeful kids sprayed each other with the hose–pulling weeds and trimming the edge of the grass with a pair of scissors. I filled the yard waste bucket and put two bags of trash in the cans. When I finished, I made fat-free popcorn and sprawled on the bed with a novel. My daughter sat and crammed popcorn into her mouth while I tried not to be distracted.
Just when we were ready to go to the pool, my daughter fell asleep (at 4:30 p.m.). Her nap delayed our departure, so we ended up at the pool from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. My daughter, the non-swimmer, the formerly cautious girl, now spends her pool-time jumping from the steps of the “big” pool into the deeper water. She grips her floating tube tightly, but doesn’t mind the splashes to her face or the other swimmers. She jumped non-stop for half an hour at a time.
And where was my husband during all this fun and frivolity? He was at the church for about fourteen hours, minus a twenty minute visit home (in time to witness my frustration with the so-called lawn) and a couple of meal breaks.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Ah yes… the couple in ministry usually spends Sunday apart from each other. My husband plays in our worship band and I do a hundred other things. We have actually spent the last two weeks sitting next to each other in church. It is quite a shock to the system.
If it will help you to know that you have company in your VBS misery, I have spent this weekend cutting 24″ strips of curling ribbon out of two 500 years spools, cut 100 30″ lanyard strips and then tied them to name tags and am currently in the throes of a fruitless attempt to cut seal silhouettes out of corrugated cardboard. The cardboard is winning and I will call the Children’s Pastor in the morning to ask if there is anyone else who can do this. Unless you know some super secret way to make cutting small, curvy lines in 1/16th inch cardboard easy? Scissors don’t do it. Two different exacto blades last for about 6 seals and take 5 – 8 minutes PER SEAL!
Er… as you can see, VBS is stressful for lots of us folk!
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Your description of Sunday morning made me laugh. It sounded so much like our Sundays used to be. My hubby wasn’t the pastor, but the head elder and as such was the service leader. I taught Sunday school and as the youth director/VBS director/Bible quiz team coach my Sundays were an endless parade of youth activities. The hours leading up to actually getting to church were awful. I saw a speaker once who said Sunday mornings were the absolute worst time to observe Christians. Ain’t that the truth?
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Ugh. I’m not a PW, but I still feel your pain.
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Hey now, your boys are 13 yes? Time to put them behind the lawn mower while you sit on the porch, sip lemonade and direct their labor. 🙂
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wow, your kids are lucky. my dad was the pastor and my mom spent as much time at the church on Sundays as my dad did, and that meant so did the kids! it was pretty miserable hanging around the church almost the entire day. We’d go home for awhile, but we’d be back for a very, very long night time service. One time I fell asleep on the back pew and my parents locked up and drove home without me. They didn’t even know I wasn’t with them until they got home!
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That, frankly, sounds kind of miserable. So sorry — and yes, we’ve all been there through one circumstance or another. Hope you find that day of rest sometime during the week.
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For years and years Dear Hubby and I never sat together in church. He was either ushering or off doing merchant seamen work or something else while I tended the kids. I remember sitting in a Young People’s service one evening, next to a woman I was friendly with but didn’t know too well. Dear Hubby came up to me to say something and when I turned back to Darlene, her mouth was hanging halfway to her knees. “I didn’t know you were married! I thought you were a single mom!” was her dumbfounded remark. LOL! So when I say DH and I were hardly ever together, I’m not exaggerating! As we’ve gotten older we manage to sit together SOMETIMES…but even now they’ll come and have him fill in if an usher doesn’t show up. He’s driven Sunday School van for around 27 years now, every Sunday for many years. We end up sitting together on Sunday mornings a couple times a year if we’re lucky.
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I cut the grass with scissors once when I was a kid.
You should have left it long to break their fall from the slide.
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just another relaxing Sunday, eh?
It’s going to be another hot one today, keep cool.
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From one PW to another, AMEN SISTER! Dont feel too bad, we all have days like that- and for us, its usually Sundays too.
14 hour days- oh can I so relate…
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so sorry youre day was so frustrating. did all the flags get taken?
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I can so relate to your morning. There have been many Sunday mornings where I am so agitated by the kids that it totally slips my mind why I am there in the first place.
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Deacon’s wife here. Sunday is no picnic. Love the worship, hate the work. I always feel for our pastor’s wife wrestling her little ones by herself. Ahhhh and then you are also the VBS director. You’re awesome.
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I understand that your husband’s main job is on Sunday, but that sucks that he’s missing out on his kids.
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