And so it begins

Our first day of Avalanche Ranch (the annual Vacation Bible School program) is over. We had fewer kids than we usually do for a variety of reasons. I’m just glad that it’s underway . . . I was at church from 12:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. yesterday, decorating and tending to the myriad of details that reside in my head.

Here’s the decorated stage:

And some close-up shots:

I am indebted to the women (and a man or two) who helped with decorations. (Especially the church people who carried in ten huge bales of straw!)

I think I may actually survive my sixth VBS in a row. Yay.

The Resurrection’s Coming

I was so focused on preparing for my conference that I forgot that Easter was coming. In fact, on Tuesday at the Mt. Hermon post office in California, when I spied an Easter-themed metal mailbox decoration, I thought it odd that this out-of-season item sat in the post office. I noticed like you might notice a Halloween jack-o-lantern in July.

And then, with a jolt, I realized Easter was coming. Ready or not. I’d forgotten that Easter was coming, even though I rose early on Palm Sunday and climbed to the top of Mt. Hermon, even though I had worshiped in church on that Sunday morning, a lump in my throat growing in response to the majesty of the music and the painful beauty of the words to the hymns.

Not until I returned home, though, did I realize how utterly unprepared I was for the holiday, the holy day. It’s not as if we join the commercial fray and purchase big gift baskets for our kids and insist the teenagers wear suits and shiny shoes to church. Our celebration is simple and practically gift-free. I bought my daughter an Easter dress last year at Marshall’s on clearance ($13) and I bought the boys new knit shirts with collars.

But Easter is not Easter without a ham and chocolate Easter bunnies, so over the past two days, I’ve purchased provisions. I boiled eggs, figuring we can dye them tomorrow afternoon, better late than never. I invited my mother and my sister and her family over. I tried on outfits and settled on a black dress with flowers. I hunted for a pair of acceptable tights to match my daughter’s dress. I baked lemon bars.

Tonight, as I drove home, the skies opened up and hard rain fell. Darkness spread over the landscape and I thought it might have been a night like tonight, that desperate night so long ago when Jesus’ friends and followers feared the worst and hoped against hope that the dark night wouldn’t last forever.

And after that black night, a night without stars and without joy, the women rose early–having slept badly, if at all–and hurried to the tomb, hurried to serve one last time and found that He was gone.

He was risen. Christ is risen indeed.

And the sun rose again. The Son rose.

The Pastor’s wife hates Sunday mornings. True or false?

I really despise Sunday mornings, especially since I’m now teaching Sunday School. I have to get up extra early and since my husband, the pastor, is already gone, I have to motivate, push and cajole my children into getting ready early, too. Here’s how this morning went.

7:20 a.m.: I wake up and tell myself (I’M A LIAR!) that I can sleep longer.

7:30 a.m.: I hear my 8-year old head to the bathroom, so from bed, I call out, “Hey, can you take a bath?” So he does.

7:45 a.m.: I crawl from bed and turn on the hot water for my shower. Apparently, my dear son has had a deep, hot bath because even after five minutes of running, the shower is tepid.

8:00 a.m.: I wake the boys and ask them to shower. I think by now the water might be hot enough for two showers. I’ve decided to skip mine–I took one last night before we went out–and so I proceed to get ready.

A few minutes later, one son is in the shower and I am putting on contact lenses. That’s when I drop one into the murky water pooling in the sink. I wore glasses to church today because that was my last contact lens.

8:30 a.m.: I am about ready. The boys are ready. My daughter is asleep. I attempt to wake her. She begins to cry. I agree to cover her back up and let her sleep a bit. I give her a few minutes. Five minutes later, after assembling all her clothes, I tell her she has to get up. She protests, but I swoop in and before she knows what’s happening, I have her in tights, her jumper and Mary Janes.

9:00 a.m.: We arrive at church only ten minutes late.

After we arrive, I don’t mind Sunday mornings. But I hate, hate, hate getting up on Sundays.

I am so grateful for two weeks of vacation from school. I am so grateful for electricity. (Some people in our area still don’t have power.) My gratitude helps me overlook the dastardly deed that occurred this afternoon . . . and which I will describe in lurid detail tomorrow. (Or at least I’ll describe using a few choice adjectives.)

On Tolerance

So, let’s see. I mentioned that I wanted to talk about the intolerance of people toward Christians. This post linking to another post written by a woman who was dismayed (horrified? discomfited?) to be attending a barbecue with a bunch of Christians (who had the nerve not to serve alcohol) sparked my reaction. That, and the Joan Rivers “Before Melissa Pulls the Plug” comedy special I paused on while channel-surfing the other night. (Then again, Joan Rivers says outrageous things about everyone, so how can anyone be offended by that?)

I understand about being uncomfortable around people who are different than you, so the woman who spent her afternoon at the barbecue feeling out of place gets my sympathy. After all, I live in one of the states where more people do not attend church than do.

“The idea that Seattle or this part of the country is a bastion of liberalism and tolerance and open-mindedness is baloney,” Gallant says. “It is just self-absorbed and trendy. These people are, in fact, very intolerant to anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They want people of faith out here to be silent about their beliefs.”

The Rev. Bill Keeton, 48, pastor of the tiny, yellow-frame Chapel of Grace in Olympia, dubs secular Washington “downright anti-religious.”

“Charting the Unchurched in America,” (USA Today) says:

The majority of Americans, 81% according to ARIS, still do claim a religion. They represent a counterargument to the theory that the more developed a country — in education, occupations, science and technology — the more its people move away from religion, says Ronald Inglehart, who heads the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Americans break the mold. Inglehart says, “Even if you look at the easiest measure of religiosity — church attendance — the USA has 30% to 32% per week depending on which poll you look at, but comparably wealthy countries in Northern Europe have 5% to 15%.”

So, eighty-some percent claim a religion (all religions, not just Christianity), but only thirty-some percent go to church. (Far less than that in my region.) I’m one of them.

I am accustomed to being mocked on television, on the internet, in print media. Christians are accused of intolerance (and downright stupidity) by those who refuse to tolerate Christian belief systems. It’s kind of funny, really, that those who claim to be tolerant of lifestyles and differing beliefs cannot tolerate Christians because of their perceived intolerance.

At least I find it funny. And offensive on occasion.

However, I try not to take offense at the illogical meanderings of people who don’t realize how intolerant they are. I assume those people have no idea what they are talking about, since most people are frighteningly ignorant of the overall message of the Bible and what a Christian is really like. Joan Rivers wouldn’t know a beatitude if it hit her upside the head, after all, so we can overlook her insensitivity to Christians. (Blessed are the meek.)

I really do believe actions speak louder than words, so I figure I don’t need to defend myself or other Christians. But every once in awhile, my eyes roll so far back in my head that I have to say something lest my eyeballs get stuck in that position. That explains this post. My eyeballs were lodged way up under my eyelids. This ought to shake them loose.

Some of you mentioned in comments that Christians are also very intolerant of other Christians. That’s true, I suppose, though I think there’s probably a better word than “intolerance” to describe the differences between various Christian denominations and factions. Sure, there are vast disagreements between Christian groups, but disagreeing with something doesn’t imply intolerance (“unwillingness to recognize and respect differences in opinions or beliefs”.)

(Yes, I quibble about semantics quite often. So?)

I have been in Christian circles my whole life–my maternal grandfather was a preacher, my uncles are ministers, my mother met my father at Bible college–I attended church three times a week until adulthood . . . and seven times a week in college (mandatory chapel every weekday and mandatory attendance at church on weekends). So, I have church-cred.

And I’m telling you that the view from here, from the life of a pastor’s wife–who never, ever mentions that fact to strangers lest they suddenly begin to censor themselves and apologize for their language and start to look for an emergency exit–from here, it sure looks like those who champion tolerance can barely tolerate me.

Which, you have to admit, is irony at its finest.

You can accuse me of a lot things–setting back the feminist movement, for instance, by ironing my husband’s pants–but please don’t accuse me of intolerance or assume that because I’m a Christian I’m a party-pooper. (I’m a party-pooper because I’m an introvert, which has nothing to do with my religion.)

The tolerant among us should have no problem with my assertion that I am right because doesn’t tolerance demand that you tolerate me, even if you disagree with me? Otherwise, that makes you intolerant, huh?

I could go in circles forever, pointing out that people who cry “intolerant!” and point an accusing finger are intolerant of the intolerant . . . but it’s boring me. So it must be boring you.

The end.

Weekend Update

Saturday morning found me in the kitchen, preparing two dishes to take to a church potluck. I suppose people exist in the world who have never experienced the joy of a church potluck, but I am not one of them. I chopped and chopped vegetables for a salad and then created a lasagna-kind of crock-pot dish.

Then I left home. I headed for the church to decorate my Sunday School classroom. I’m teaching the preschoolers again this year, mainly because my daughter will not go to a Sunday School class unless I’m the teacher. For years and years, I’ve taught preschoolers about Adam and Eve and about Noah and his ark and about Zacchaeus, the wee little man who climbed a tree to see Jesus. I’ve introduced dozens of children to Bibles stories and this year will be no different.

I spent a few hours decorating (using left-over VBS materials, mostly) and finally, at 1:20 p.m., fled the church for the anonymity of Value Village. I’ve mentioned before how the meditation of sorting through other people’s cast-offs soothes my mind and yesterday was no different. (Alas, I didn’t find any Pampered Chef items this time.)

The potluck was well-attended. My daughter exclaimed with glee over going to church for dinner.

She asked, “Will we listen to the music?” and I said, “No, not tonight. We’ll just eat.” And she replied, “Good, because the music is boring!” (On Sunday mornings, we strive to stay in the service until the sermon starts. I tell her, “First, we’ll listen to the music.”)

That reminded of the time my 4-year old son explained to me why he didn’t like Sunday School: “Because all they talk about is Jesus and Jesus is no fun!”

When we left the potluck, my daughter asked, “Are we coming to church tomorrow?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “I don’t want to go to church!” (She normally loves going.)

I said, “Well, we’re going.”

Then she launched into a fit, the specialized variety of four year old girls. Tears ran down her cheeks and she wailed her displeasure.

We all buckled up and I drove the van home while she cried and cried. When we entered the house, she immediately began stripping, even though she still wept. “What are you doing?” I asked and she said, “I’m taking a bath!”

So, I ran the bathwater. She watched a show and soon, was in bed.

She woke three times in the night, once at midnight (my husband got up) and twice in the pre-dawn darkness. The last time, I didn’t even touch her, I just hissed, “Lay down and go to sleep!” and she mumbled something about a bad dream and I said (with no pity), “Just think happy thoughts and go to sleep!”

I returned to bed, grateful that my husband had suggested we stay home from church. (He said so after I described her dismay and tears–he wasn’t home during the fit.) The horrible night of interrupted sleep convinced me of the wisdom of staying home. Plus, this would be our last chance to play hooky before Sunday School starts next week.

And my daughter? I said, “Do you want to go to church?” and she said, “No!” followed by “Yes!”

We went to church and as usual, I was glad we went. The children are growing up with a sense that they belong to something bigger than just our family. They belong to the family of God, a place where adults know their names and don’t even blink when they take four pieces of dessert at a potluck. (Well, maybe they blink, but they find my children amusing, I like to think.)

Tomorrow, we’re going to the Western Washington Fair. I am eager to show the draft horses and the piglets and the bunnies to my daughter. My 8-year old will dream tonight of riding the fastest rides while my teenagers will try to decide which delectable fried food they should eat.

I will wish I had more time to study the quilts and 4-H displays and I’ll take as many pictures as I can while balancing my desire to photograph the moment with my longing to participate in it.

My husband will rush us along because that’s what he does, but we will slow him down. For one day, we will all slow down, even as we hurry to the roller coaster line.

The Day in Pictures and A Few Words

Last night, I managed to drop into bed at 12:30 a.m. I was up at 6:20 a.m. to open the door for my 9-year old babysittee (I’m the babysitter; she’s the babysittee.) Then, back to bed for thirty more futile minutes. I was at church at 8 a.m. for final photocopying and troubleshooting and welcoming. (See those flowers? All created by Church Ladies. We strung them on thin wire into garlands. My friend, Jenn, and I painted the little village on giant sheets of foam insulation.)

I had 78 children preregistered by last night. This morning, another twenty arrived and when it was all said and done, we ended up with 90 children in attendance. As far as I know, we encountered no major problems, aside from a three-year old who was distraught for an hour. We called her parents who picked her up.

My daughter shocked and awed me by agreeing to attend the preschool class with her best friend. His stepdad was her crew leader and she followed along and participated as if she’d been going to preschool her whole life. (She’s never even stayed with a babysitter, other than her grandmother. She refuses to stay in the church nursery without me.) During the closing program, the speaker asked for volunteers to come onstage and sing and dance.

She went up and sang and danced!

Furthermore, she is completely ready to do it all again tomorrow. I could not be more surprised. Well, I could be more surprised, say if a caterpillar crawled out of my ear right now and turned into a butterfly large enough to spirit me away to a tropical island. That might surprise me more.

Only four days to go. Though, actually, my work is pretty much done. When you are the behind-the-scenes organizer, the weeks prior to the event are the real work. The actual event is a pleasure to behold from a chair while sipping a Diet Coke. With lime.

Almost Coherent

Well, apparently God loves me after all, because I managed to fill the vital leadership roles for Vacation Bible School.

Next up? Telephone calls to beg people to be crew leaders.

After that? I’m going to turn refrigerator boxes into a Mexican village. Ha!

Not only am I distracted by VBS, but I have also fallen headfirst into a novel by John Irving and I spend all my supposed free time reading. I’m nearly done with it, though, so then I can focus my attention on the things that need my concentration. Like the disgusting kitchen floor. And the ironing. And reading all the neglected blogs on my Bloglines account.

I am being buried one detail at a time. If you emailed me recently, please note that I intend to answer my emails tomorrow, too. Right after I solve the problem of world hunger. (Can I just say that I think Warren Buffet and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation rock? Wow!)

One final note. My daughter, who is almost 4, occasionally says, “Mom, I am so boring!” She practically rolls her eyes from the fatigue of being just exactly that “boring.” She means, of course, “bored,” but I find her error charming and more exact than she could ever know. Aren’t those who claim to be bored just excruciatingly boring people at heart? (Have I just inadvertently offended someone? If so, let me hasten to add . . .except for you.)

A Tale of VBS Woe

For the past five years, I’ve been in charge of our small church’s Vacation Bible School program. We generally have one hundred children registered and about thirty volunteers. It’s my job to recruit, to organize and to make the magic happen.

The crucial volunteers are those who lead the seven stations: snacks, games, songs, drama, theater, crafts, and closing program. We also have indispensable volunteers who run a parallel preschool program which runs at the same time.

Most of my volunteers have returned from year to year, but this year? This year is killing me. First, my drama people said they had conflicts. (One is teaching summer school. One is working on a project.) I replaced them with a talented high-school student who just tonight called and said a huge, exciting opportunity came up for her to fly to Houston–it’s school-related, though I confess to missing some of the details because I was doing my grocery-shopping on-line when she called and I was distracted by the fact that she’s abandoning me.

The youth pastor (who occasionally reads this blog and let me say what a fine young man he is!) originally said he’d be gone the whole week. He later amended that and will only be missing two out of the five days due to his commitment to be at camp that week.

Oh, the high school student I mentioned who was going to be my drama person? She was also my song person. Now I have to find two people, or three, to take her place.

My theater person couldn’t help this year. (Her teens will have jobs and she has to shuttle them around.) So, I recruited a new person . . . but now I’m going to ask her if she’d prefer to do the kitchen and then replace her with someone else who volunteered for the theater. Confused yet?

The kitchen person from last year hasn’t returned my calls. (She’s left the church since last year and I heard she got married.) A volunteer stepped up on Sunday, but she called today to say she has a scheduling conflict, too. (Her daughter’s going to graduate school, moving that particular week.) So I need to shuffle again and see if I come up with a replacement . . . which I think I can do.

This afternoon, my preschool director called to say she won’t be there the last two weeks. Her great-aunt is turning 90 years old and the birthday party can’t be any other time.

So, let’s count. I’ve had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people tell me no this year.

And that’s just the core station leaders. I still have to recruit sixteen crew leaders for the easier job of guiding small groups of children from station to station.

Ack! Only four weeks to go . . . my materials haven’t yet arrived, my volunteers are dropping right and left and I can only be so many places at one time. I am capable of doing all the jobs necessary, but until I perfect cloning, I simply have to find more people to help. The first year I ran the program, I sang the songs, did the drama, and taught the closing program, all while seven months pregnant. But even I can’t be in two or three places at once.

Meanwhile, the church ladies have gone crazy making Mexican flowers out of tissue paper in response to my request on Sunday morning. I’ve been getting phone calls asking where to put the finished flowers . . . I might not have a functional program come July 10, but I will have eight thousand tissue paper Mexican flowers in which to drown myself.

Integrating the Sacred and the Secular

When I was a child, my mother ordered us to turn the channel when Donnie Osmond sang “And I’m a little bit rock’n’roll!” For rock and roll music was sin. So was dancing, even square-dancing, drinking alcohol, swearing, smoking, mini-skirts, hip-huggers and shopping on Sundays.

As I grew up and attended Bible College, life seemed to be neatly divided into two categories: Sacred and Secular. Christian music? Good. Secular music? Bad. Christian books? Good. Secular books? Bad. Dancing in the Spirit? Good. Dancing at a bar? Bad.

My four years at Bible College (where women were required to wear dresses to class, even on snowy days) brought out the cynic in me. I heard enough rambling sermons to last me a lifetime and I saw enough hypocrisy to turn my heart to stone. I’m lucky I escaped with my faith intact, because I definitely needed it later when I traveled the rocky paths of infertility, cancer, death, loss, heartbreak–in other words, Real Life.

The idea that life should be lined up in separate categories crumbled, bit by bit, until finally, I came to understand that I would live my life without a division between the sacred and the secular. Good music is good music, whether or not it includes the lyrics “Jesus died on the cross,” or not. Fantastic art is simply fantastic art. A walk through a still forest, glimpsing trilliums in bloom is as sacred as a moment in a stained-glass church.

Just tonight, I came across a book by Steve Turner called Imagine: A Vision For Christians in the Arts, which discusses this very idea. I can’t wait to read it, if the sample first page on Amazon and the comments are good indications of the quality of the rest of the book.

So, when I see a particular well-known blogger announcing that she is partitioning her blog into two separate blogs, one for Christians and one for non-Christians, I just shake my head. Maybe that’s because I don’t write for Christians. I don’t even write for non-Christians. I just write for people. I’m not a Christian blogger and this isn’t a Christian blog. I’m a blogger who is a Christian. I don’t divide my life–or my blog–into partitions. (I even avoided associating myself with Christian bloggers when I began this blog for fear that I would be boxed in by other people’s expectations. I just wanted to write. I didn’t want to write a Pastor’s Wife’s Blog.)

Hey, I’m no apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, but I do know this: Taking care of my kids is my spiritual worship. Writing well is my spiritual worship. Singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in church is my spiritual worship. So is washing the laundry and walking on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Whatever I do, if I do it well and with acknowledgement of the Creator, that is worship.

My integration of the sacred and secular is incomplete, because I am in progress, learning as I go. Each believer certainly has to find his or her own way, embracing some things and rejecting others. But building walls around our lives, pulling up the drawbridges and digging moats can’t be what Jesus intended for us to do. He came to bring us life, not fear and judgment. (And furthermore, when anyone assumes I’m not bright enough to be able to distinguish the differences between sects, cults and even different denominations, that annoys me. I wonder if it annoys Jesus, too?)

Well, while I’m at it, writing this atypical post which has nothing to do with grocery shopping (I purchased twenty bags full of groceries at 10:45 p.m. tonight!) or laundry (currently backed up), I will also comment on this post at Internet Monk. He talks about another blogger, this guy who announced he would no longer call himself a “Christian, an idea he bandied about here.

I just have one word for that guy: SEMANTICS! Quit fussing about how the label “Christian” might taint your testimony or make you look and go feed the hungry, visit a prisoner, share with the poor, listen to a lonely widow, serve someone who doesn’t deserve it and then get back to me. I’m guessing that by then you might be too tired and too peaceful to worry about what someone might think if you accept the descriptive label “Christian.”

(If I continue to roll my eyes that far back in my head, they might stay that way, so if you see a 41-year old woman at Albertsons with only the bloodshot whites of her eyes showing, say hello. That would be me.)

The Pastor’s Day Off

A particular church woman only calls our house with very bad news. She called tonight at 8:54 p.m., but my husband was still at a meeting. He’s on a board for an organization that provides housing and treatment for homeless people and once a month, they have long meetings.

When he returned home a bit later, I met him at the door with the news that a man from our church died tonight. He immediately headed back out to assist the new widow. In the past year, this particular woman’s adult daughter died unexpectedly, too, so she’s had a rough year.

My husband returned home at about 10:00 p.m. He said the funeral will be Saturday and, “Don’t make any plans,” and I said (please slap me), “Well, that’s the story of my life.” And it is, but I don’t mind.

Truly, I do take these things in stride. I am concerned for the woman who lost her husband tonight. I understand that her loss trumps my weekend plans. Perhaps if my dad hadn’t died almost exactly 16 years ago, I’d resent my husband’s job constantly intruding on our lives.

But when my dad died, the pastor I called said, “Well, I’m not sure we can get the church set up for a funeral. The janitor’s been out of town.” He didn’t come over to sit with us. He didn’t offer condolences. His cold-heartedness still stuns me.

So even though I am so far behind the scenes, I am almost invisible, I support my husband as he heads out into the night to sit with someone in their loss and grief. It’s what I do and it helps him do what he needs to do.

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