STONE SOUP: Sweet Sunday

Our little church body has not been able to renew it's lease anymore in the nice Seventh Day Adventist building. (They meet on Saturdays, we meet on Sundays) And so we met in a high school auditorium this morning. The floor was so steep and slanted we were laughing at the thought of some of us tripping and rolling downhill onto the stage. (And if my sisters had been there, we just might have wet our pants picturing it...)The folding theater seats kept hitting some of us in the rear if we were too slow standing up, although the children very much enjoyed getting 'stuck' in them. After the service, our family needed to have a photo taken for a couple different things, and the outside background was to be either a bare tree in front of classroom windows, or, um, a brick wall. And if you get a copy of our Christmas card this year, you'll see which one we chose.

But here, today, in this new building, in this new season, were still the saints of God. Worshiping and hearing God's Word and encouraging one another. It was sweet.

After church, my husband of 20 years and I went out to dinner. The older kids helped serve lunch at home and get little ones down for a rest. And the two of us sat in our car and processed and struggled and blamed and cried and forgave just lots of little things that had mounted up into a few big things. And we walked into a cute little Greek restaurant, happy to be stuck with one another. We had yummy gyros and Greek salad, and it was sweet.

When we got home, Kenny headed off to the piano to learn a new song, and I gathered a few of our youngers to head off to the neighborhood Fall Festival. There were pony rides and bouncy castles and corn dogs and hay rides. I was stopped by a woman who said she had just been asked about the origin of man by my son. I smiled and said, 'Oh, you must mean Tommy!'. This woman had actually been in the front of the building during Revive 1787, and saw our kiddos perform their mime song. So, it was a neat connection. And Tommy left with the phone number of the woman in charge of the Fall Festival, so he could come back next year and do animal balloons and magic tricks. Being there tonight, breathing in the fresh, cool autumn air, sitting on hay bales, watching my children just enjoy themselves, was sweet.

And now, as I type this out and think about crawling into my warm bed with flannel sheets, I can hear my older boys having some sort of a Mexican fiesta downstairs. Complete with guitar music and whoops and hollers. And that would be sweet, but it's 10:40 pm. Sigh. Time to text them and tell them the party's over.