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These two? The two (slightly blurry because Momsie cannot hold a camera still) on the left here?  They teach me more in a day than I ever thought possible.  They are a daily crash course cram session in love and life, my friends.

Here’s a little example:

We are all getting ready for church.  When anything can go wrong in our house, or be upsetting, or just really frazzling or achingly ANNOYING, this is that time.

Time for church?  Oh, then the coffee maker needs to spill.  And da maper syrup (as Red calls it)?  That too will spill. (It is SO not a good idea for anyone to ever serve anything that merits a dose of maple syrup on Sunday morning.  Stick with packaged, terrifically unhealthy corn syrup granola bombs, if you must.  NO SYRUP.  I have yet to learn this lesson, but today might be the day).  Discovery that the cat has suddenly forgotten where her cat box is?  7:50 am on Sunday, of course.  Zippers breaking?  Yep, that time.  Momsie’s hormones spiraling out of control paired with despair and gloom?  Sunday Morning Coming Down.

You get the picture.

Anyhow, we’re all getting ready for our time of worship with our Lord and Savior, with gritted teeth and much grumbling (the getting ready, not the worship, and most of the grumbling is from me).  Momsie is at her parenting APEX, demonstrated by saying things like,

“DUDES REALLY.  FOR THE LOVE.  WE HAVE GOT TO GO IT’S WAY PAST TIME WE ARE SO LATE I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW HOW LATE WOULD YOU PLEASE HUSTLE IT’S OK WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO WASH HANDS AND I MEAN NOW GET TO THE CAR OR SO HELP ME I WILL LEAVE YOU BOTH HERE WITH THE CAT!”

Toddlers don’t react well to threats.  Or rushing.  Or run on sentences.  I KNOW. But somehow I seem to forget.  Every. Sunday. Morning.

Whilst herding my sweet unherdables to the car, I forget, in the rush, a Very Important Bag that I was supposed to bring for the hubs (who is already at church due to his supposed “usher duty” which I find suspect.  He does wear the badge, and I have seen proof of it when he has to collect the offering, but honestly, I think he just does it so he can avoid our house at 7:50 on Sunday mornings).  And away we go, Momsie sighing with relief that we might just make it in before the first hymn, and the boys all combed and (hopefully) underweared…  and then I realize we gotta go back for The Bag.

“Mommah? What? Why you growl?”

“Why we turning round?”

“Mommah!  Ders the church!  DER it is!  DER!”

Momsie, through gritted teeth: “We have to go back.  I promised Daddy I would bring him his Sunday School bag.  I gotta go get it. It’s (grittttt) gonna be  O.K.”

“Huh.  We late?”

GRITTINGLY:  “Yep.”

“A pwomise?  You made a pwomise to Daddy?”

“Uh huh.”  Once more, with GRRRRIT:  “A promise.”

“So, it’s two pieces.”

“Huh?” Now Momsie’s confused.

I pull up to the house, but Blonde is still talking.  Jesus* asked me to stay in the car.  I did.

“A promise.  It’s two pieces.  Like a puzzle.”

I glanced in the rear view mirror.  Blonde found my eyes and locked on.

“Der’s da first piece:  You made a promise.” He holds up one hand.

“And den, da second piece.  You have to make it go.”  The other hand clasps his first.

“Dey go together.  Da promise, and den da doing it.”

Red:  “Like saying ‘Sorry’!”  We turn to him.

“You say sorry, but then you have to help!”  He clasped his hands.  “Dey fit!  Like together!”

I chewed on that all the way up the steps, to the bag, back to the car, and back to church.  We were late.

And I was exactly on time.

*When I say Jesus asked me to stay in the car, it was not a big, loving voice that I heard, saying, “Sweet Dana, stay for a minute, please.”  Nope.  Just more like a soft weight on my chest that slowed me down and made me sit back a bit. He didn’t talk, outright.

But wouldn’t it had been cool if He HAD!  🙂

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And, now, I leave you with this. Let us pray your Sunday mornings don’t look like the following: