free to quit

Hey, friends! I’m at Kindred Mom today, this time as a quitter. This is an excerpt. read the whole thing here. 


I am sweating. The not-so-tiny infant inside my enormous body and the church sanctuary with poor air handling combine to make me regret my choice to abandon my typical mom-bun and wear my long hair down. It’s sticking to my neck and face. More bothersome than the heat and my crazy hormones is the strain of parenting. I managed to herd them to the service on my own, but now I am in the very front row at church. This is where my mother-in-law sits. Because my husband is perpetually in the back at the soundboard, the prospect of extra grownup hands to wrangle my girls outweighs my general aversion to being in the front row. My 2- and 3-year-old girls are squirmy and whisper loudly at inappropriate times. They tap my hugely pregnant belly repeatedly and urgently, wanting to know why they can’t have crackers and juice (communion) for “snack” and when the music is coming so they can twirl with abandon in the aisle. My church is made largely of young families, so I’m not getting side-eye from fellow congregants; they seem mostly amused by my girls’ antics. I am not.

My church has Sunday School during the service, so they could go to class with kids their own age, have all kinds of noisy preschool fun, and eat raisins for snack instead of communion, but I don’t see any theological basis for dividing families for worship this way. I want my littles to feel like part of the larger church body. I want them to know what it looks like to worship with their family (well, with their mama, at any rate) and see Daddy serving as a sound guy. I want them to know how to sit quietly, scribbling on the children’s bulletins provided. There will be time later for interacting with their peers, but this is the time to lay a foundation for fellowship that will serve them for decades to come. I have visions of them sweetly scribbling away, munching on goldfish crackers, perhaps occasionally asking pertinent questions about the sermon in their best “library voices.” Visions that, despite my best effort every week for their entire lives, have remained unfulfilled.

***

That morning, I quit.

(read the rest here.)