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Only two days since last post, but this is truly worth reading about...

          How to break (self imposed) rules at church and make yourself into a hypocrite

My daughter and I were sitting in church yesterday morning, the sermon was wonderful! One of those "I can relate because I've been there" sermons that bring out old heartaches and new bruises and makes you grateful for the heavenly forgiveness that our Savior offers each of us humans when we mess up repeatedly.

I was crying. My chest was tight. I was holding my breath and wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my blouse.
I'm sure the people sitting next to me were wondering why I was tapping my foot and rocking back and forth to some mysterious beat only I could hear. (I do this unconsciously when I'm stressed and can't move around)

(let me just insert here- I hate when people talk in church, let their baby cry without taking him outside, teens wandering in and out, and giggling children playing noisily without a gentle reprimand. This is Church, people, we are suppose to be worshiping here!)

Anyway,  let me go back to the "before I was crying" part for just a moment.

My daughter was suffering from allergies and neither of us had any tissue so she went to the restroom to get some. broken rule # 1.

The family sitting in front of us has the most adorable baby who kept throwing her toys at me. I kept the last one and she started to cry! broken rule # 2

The children sitting across from us had parents otherwise engaged and were kicking each other so after making eye contact with the younger one I put my finger up to my lips to signal them to be quiet and the little girl told me, "you can't tell us to be quiet!" As everyone knows, unless you physically go into action this is only an invitation for kids to continue what they're doing. broken rule # 3

So now back to my crying part. There we were in the middle of this heart-wrenching sermon and I am sobbing and rocking and my daughter hands me a "tissue" to wipe my eyes and is gently rubbing my back. (sweet huh) I take the tissue and unroll about 8 feet of paper towel! It made me smile as I was trying to secretly Rip off a section so no one would hear and then I turn to hand her back the other 7 feet of it and noticed she was bawling her head off too! 

she looked back at me and said, "well you started it!" Then I got the giggles!! Oh boy, the hysterical kind where your laugh is a octave higher than the soprano in the choir and you start to snort! You can see where this is going now, can't you? We were both laughing and crying and snorting. (I didn't want to get up because we were almost to the end and I didn't want to draw any more attention to us. broken rule # 4) Then I happened to notice some of our high council staring straight at the two of us but by then we were to far gone to get control so I just had to be mortified until the prayer was offered before I could make my way to the front to apologise for being irreverent. (The most wonderful part of this is, what a sweet, sweet, girl I have to notice hurt and try to give comfort, she's SWEET!) Hopefully our congregation will be forgiving, I know I will be from now on!

Luckily, we skipped Sunday school. After that we decided the only place we belonged was the zoo, so we went! The animals were glad to see us!

"Joy comes from knowing God loves me..."