Sunday Mornings 2

I am not very good at church. I mean, I am quite well behaved when I am there, I am just not good at the whole getting ready and then being ready to listen thing...  I am hoping I am not alone or I am going to look like a right numpty.  If you really want to know what I am like on Sunday mornings click here.

At cell group the other night - by the by, I do love calling our group ‘cell’ group - it has a rough gangster type feel about it - like we all had cells on H block and can share stories of communal showering - but I digress. I shared a bit about how I just can’t seem to get us all ready on time on Sundays and how stressed I was feeling about it. I have gotten to the point where I am thinking of abandoning church to eliminate some stress from my life. 


Then I decided I should probably pray about and not just make decisions like that willy-nilly.  So I did, and I thought God would find it preferable to have me spend the hours of 9am-11am on a Sunday in quiet reflection on the back deck sipping tea and talking to my children about why Samaritans were seen as bad. But no, I found myself feeling really sad about the way I have been treating Sunday mornings. They have not been a time of preparation to hear from God or to spend time with his peeps. I had turned Sunday morning into a stress filled, frustrating and sometimes teary time of a parent behaving badly. So a new solution came to me.

Now, you must understand, I don’t want to come across as some nutter who claims to ‘hear’ from God about which type of bread to buy or which shoes will help me to fulfil God’s purposes for me. But, I have been in churches and around God enough to know that the still quiet voice that pushes us into a new line of thinking, is God. 

So, this new solution. Instead of me trying to get as much sleep as humanly possible on Sunday mornings and staying in bed as long as I can get away with, the solution is, to get up earlier. Can you believe it? That had to be from God, there is no way I would think of that on my own. So, this week I tried it. I set my alarm for 6am. I was going to give it a burl. And, God being a God who knows my inner workings, had me awake 10 minutes before the alarm. So I got up. 

I had a great morning. I made a lovely date slice for morning tea, I did some dishes and I got my heart ready for the morning rush. I was able to allow my brain to wander around the ridges for a while instead of harnessing it and trying to get it to go faster than it wanted to. My eldest daughter got up and we had the loveliest time together, we hugged a lot, giggled a lot, she kept me company while I shaved me legs (lucky little thing) and we chatted. At a reasonable hour we made coffee for daddy and laid out the breakfast things. Daddy, who was able to sleep in, was woken by freshly brewed coffee and a calm wife and bubbly five year old.

We were all in the car nice and early and, here I would love to say we had ‘No Tantrums’, but alas, we have a two year old princess diva, who did not like something or other and ruined our near perfect record. We arrived at church all in a calm and orderly fashion. It was a great success and this will be repeated. I am hoping that I can go for a walk to my favourite mountain top vantage point (want to say ‘look out’ but that sounds a bit seedy) and spend some time praying love over the valleys.

Thanks God for not giving up on me, 

thanks for always waiting for me,

thanks for the reminders that seem hard but are actually easy,

thanks for my beautiful family who I spent time with this morning,

thanks for the good things you pile into my life.  

Amen.