Crippling Along

I have no beautiful visual aids to share, although today was a good day. I'm still struggling with the unpredictability of life, particularly parenthood. I feel like a total wimp to complain because there is absolutely nothing seriously hard about my life- my marriage is great, my kids are healthy- all my "problems" are very, very minor. And still. I get really frustrated. Specifically, I feel really lame about our spiritual life right now. On Christmas Day as I was putting Jack to bed he said "Mom, Christmas doesn't feel like it's about celebrating God." Out of the mouths of babes... At our church, the women of the church take care of the cleaning. The schedule rotates and you have a partner, so each person ends up cleaning the church once every four months or so. My turn always seems to come at a bad time and no matter how hard I try to plan for success it seems like it totally disrupts our routine and I'm constantly thinking I should take myself off the cleaning list. But that's stupid. In spite of the fact that our church attendance has been spotty recently, church is important to me. Especially our little tiny shoebox church full of the sweetest oddballs you can imagine. There is something about the Byzantine Church which attracts people from all walks of life for all sorts of different reasons, and we are a colorful parish indeed. So today I cleaned church, and I took Jack with me to help because he's not wild about sitting still while church is actually in session but he loves cleaning, so I figure it's important to help him build positive associations with church. Also, I want our kids to know that church is important to me. It isn't really important to them right now, and that's okay. Lately it's been rather challenging to illustrate the importance of church to our kids because we've been missing Liturgy a lot, most notably Christmas Eve. I struggle with how much of an effort we should make, what chances we should take, how hard it should be. Matteas started vomiting the 22nd of December and had a fever until 8:00 a.m. Christmas Eve, so he was personally out of the woods but I worried about Jack coming down with it, about carrying germs to other people with small kids. I know occasional illness is a part of life and a little virus isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but we got one just in time to change our Christmas plans. So tonight I was feeling really pleased that I'd manned up and cleaned church, that Jack had helped and that it had gone well, and I was thinking it might even inspire him to be cheerful about going to church in the morning so we could show Aaron what a great job we'd done of cleaning. During dinner, Matteas started grunting. Then he cried out in pain. "Momma," he wailed, "it's not working!" "What's not working, Love?" "My poop!" I tried all my tricks: fluids, a warm bath, a rather personal massage, all to no avail. The poor baby was so exhausted from his battle with his blockage that he fell asleep the moment I laid him in his crib. I walked out of the boys' room and into the kitchen, intending to get a batch of oats soaking in buttermilk so we could have pancakes in the morning, hoping the fiber would get Matteas moving again. And then I remembered. Tomorrow is Sunday. Church. Shit. Dilemma: do I drag my constipated toddler to church where he will likely be in great agony and I will spend the majority of Liturgy trying to comfort him in the cold church basement so his wailing doesn't disturb the congregation, or do we stay home so he can poop in peace? Either option feels a little ridiculous. There is, of course, the possibility that I could go to Liturgy alone or just with Jack and leave Matteas home with Aaron, but it seems cruel to be away from my baby when he's in distress. Also, I don't like church to be a dividing force. But if I go, then there is at least the suggestion of a normal Sunday rhythm. My hope is that Matteas will be able to resolve things in a timely fashion, we will have pancakes to celebrate and then we'll all go to church and sit proudly in the richly-polished pews, and people will whisper about how unbelievably well-behaved our kids are. But if that doesn't happen, I will probably stay home and help Matteas work things out and then we will spend the day together as a family. It's not ideal, but for now it just might be the best we can do.