The Dutch Rush

Have you ever wondered what happens in the front row at church? With the pastor’s kids?

A few months ago, a child who will remain nameless had been to his uncle’s house on Saturday night to watch a UFC fight. That night, John Jones broke his toe. In a horrific way. Yuck. The boys came home and went to bed, no problem…

…until we were in the front row at church singing one of the last songs. This child turns to me, he looks like a ghost. He says “Mom, I don’t feel so good…” well, we all know what that means. Get the child outside. He weaves down the aisle, he can’t see, because he is about to pass out. We make it outside…he begins to get color back in his face…I ask what happened. He’s not sure…

FOUR HOURS LATER, we are sitting at home, he looks at me with sad brown eyes and says “Uh, Mom, I was thinking about John Jones’ toe at church. I’m sorry, I know I’m not suppose to think about that in church…”

Okay…

In my defense, I have never told him what he may or may not think about in church! However, we have a fresh new “No thinking about things that will make you puke or pass out while in church” rule.

A few weeks later we were sitting (in the front row), when all of a sudden my teenage girl tells me that she feels funny and that one of her arms looks WAY longer than the other one.

Oh. My. Gosh. Hang in there, girl.

Throughout the (interesting, I’m sure) sermon, she continued to see strange things, felt faint, might throw up, etc, etc, etc. Anyone with a teen girl knows this is not entirely out of the ordinary, (for my child it is, but I have hung out with enough teenage girls to know this isn’t outside the normal everyday activity). During the VERY SAME service, Toe Boy starts whispering “MOM, I DON’T FEEL VERY WELL…” I say “oh really, welcome to the club, if you aren’t going to puke, then please just be quiet”. Yeah. I’m getting tough in my old age. I look over to see that he has gotten those little wax soda bottles in sunday school and has not only had the liquid inside, but has also eaten most of the wax too…

Michael said that from his view we all looked like a Chinese Fire Drill.

A few weeks later at church (of course) I looked over in time to see another child pull his loose tooth out of his mouth. What? TO SEE HIM PULL HIS LOOSE TOOTH OUT OF HIS MOUTH.

What in the world.

Due to the distraction of having children come in and out of the service, we have forbid our children from heading out to use the bathroom on a whim.

This was not a whim. This was bloody. This was urgent. I nodded, he went to swish, wash off and bag his tooth.

Naturally he could not have done that at breakfast when we could all see it dangling out of his mouth. Nope.

Next there was the ant infestation. Only in the front row. Of course, they did migrate up onto the stage a few weeks later and were then promptly taken care of. But the first week I could not believe my eyes when I saw ant after ant crawl up my foot. The new carpet disguises them perfectly, so I could not tell that I my feet were basically on an anthill.

To most of you, that really isn’t a big deal. But, I have had enough personal encounters with ants in Mexico to ever take an ant lightly again. I also hate how they can take over an entire pantry within minutes. I did not have my pantry at church, but the idea of them crawling up my legs while I had to sit perfectly still…

As luck would have it, I was sitting next to the friend who is most familiar with my aversion to ants. She has witnessed enough of my Mexico situations to know that this was horror of horrors. We just stared at each other. Like “this can’t be happening”. And then we lost it. I had tears. I couldn’t look in Michael’s direction. I comforted myself with the thought that God was probably laughing too.

Annnd that brings us to last Sunday.

I was sitting innocently in my seat when my friend leaned over to me and mentioned that he had not seen or heard from his wife all morning and that was a little unusual.

Huh, I thought to myself. I went back to listening to Michael.

A few minutes later this friend tells me that he would like to go make sure she’s okay, but his keys happen to be on the stage behind Michael and he fears it would cause a bit of a distraction to get them.

I nod, yes, yes it would.

He wonders if he might borrow my keys/car. Oh sure. Apparently I lost my wits for a moment, due to the stress of possibly making Michael get distracted by the goings on in the front row. I decided that I should separate the car key he would need from my other 5 keys, because I must have thought he would be hopelessly confused if I were to hand him the entire key ring. Keys jangle. I see Michael’s eye ball looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

Great.

A few minutes later friend is back. “No worries, she is in the nursery”.