Saturday Night Church

For once, we had a weekend that I didn't feel like flew by in a flash.  Our church started a Saturday evening service this week and since the church service we usually attend is RIGHT at the beginning of Henry's weekend nap time (he has a different nap time for daycare and for us, completely self imposed), it can make church a little... distracting.

As in Phil and I spend the entire hour passing Henry back and forth to each other while he does a crocodile death row.  We also attempt to distract him and keep him quiet through any means necessary included books, drawing, and food.  Whatever scenario takes place, it isn't super conducive to paying attention to the sermon.  Most of the time, we leave and I have no idea what the sermon topic was about.

We could take him to the nursery, but he already spends all week away from me at daycare.  I'm not too keen on having him with someone else watch him for any more than I have to.

Long story short, we went to church Saturday night.  It was excellent.  The service was nice and relaxed.  Henry was calm.  I think we found a new church service.

Another bonus... we had Sunday morning totally free, both in terms of time and guilt (I've got the guilt thing down.  I would have made a great Catholic).

We didn't go anywhere.

Eventually, I will learn to use my camera.

Oh and I gave Henry a haircut.  And cut him.  Mother of the year.

After a rough couple of weeks feeling like we are drowning a little, we had a nice relaxing weekend.  And I even feel like I am mentally prepared for the week ahead.

I'm still working on getting our house more organized.  I have a couple of ideas in the works, I just haven't gotten a chance to get them totally figured out.  But when I do, I will share them.  Secrets don't make friends.  :)

Lent

I'm not Catholic, but I am a Lutheran which is kind of like Catholic-light (the beliefs without the rituals and rules.  My pastors would roll their eyes and I am pretty sure Martin Luther just rolled over in his grave).  In the Lutheran church because we follow a church calendar, we do observe the season of Lent.

A little church calendar education for those who are curious...
Lent is a 40 (ish) day period preceding Easter.  It is meant to reflect the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert without food, resisting the temptations of Satan.  Some people decide to take certain things out of their lives during the season of Lent as a way to emulate Jesus' ability to resist the Devil those 40 days.  In addition (and this is my understanding) the act of removing a temptation for our lives give us the opportunity to reflect of Jesus' sacrifice of his life on the cross for us.  For example, if you give up coffee, every time you crave or want coffee you would think about Jesus and his ultimate sacrifice.

Most of the time, people give up foods like fast food, coffee, alcohol, chocolate, etc.  And I have done those things in the past.  This year, my low-iodine diet will start about a week after Easter so I have decided I don't want to give up any food items for Lent.  I may be a little glutenous, if I am going to be honest.

After several discussions with Phil, I have decided that this year for Lent, I have given up the Snooze button. 

As I have mentioned in the past, getting up has been a struggle for me for a while.  I wake up at 6 in the morning, take my thyroid medicine and then fall back asleep.  The alarm goes off every 15 minutes for the next hour and then I finally get out of bed around 7, freaking out because I slept WAY too late and usually end up a little late to work.

I'm over it.  I'm sick of it.  And what better motivation than Jesus.  :)

I figure in the morning when I want really badly to hit the snooze and fall back asleep, I can think to myself, "Jesus resisted the Devil.  I can resist 15 minutes of sleep."

Don't you think?

Day 1 went well.  Granted it took me 30 minutes to actually WAKE UP and get out of bed, but I didn't go back to sleep.  And I was able to get ready at a leisurely pace, make the bed, get my stuff together, and get to work early (shock of all shocks).

We'll see how this goes when the endocrinologist starts messing with my thyroid dosage.

Do you observe Lent?  What are you giving up?

Church Lesson without going to Church

Phil and I were really good about going to church before we got married. We made it a super priority along with several other very good habits (eating well and working out). But since we got married, life has just be CRAZY. I am not even sure why or how it happened, but things just haven't been "settled" I guess you could say.

So last week we were working on fixing that and we went to church. Well... it was one of the most depressing sermons I have heard in a while. The last we were in church before that was at our wedding. Happiest day of our lives. Bright future ahead of us. Sunshine and daisies. You get the picture. Then the sermon was about loss, grief and death. Losing your spouse, having a young child die, stuff like that. Basically Phil and I were both just trying to not burst into tears in the middle of church. Talk about having your worst nightmare thrown in front of you. Now I know life doesn't offer a guarantee good time, and that grief and loss are a part of life. But I don't really want to have to think about it too much until I get. I am not totally selfish though. I understand that there are tons of people (unfortunately) in the congregation that needed to hear that message. So it was good for them. It made me want to cry.

So back to this Sunday...

We had every intention of heading to church, but we just weren't super jazzed about it after last week. Plus, Phil had a super big important meeting today he needed to be uber-prepared for so it was ok for him to have some extra time during the day to work on that. While he worked, I did house stuff and I watched some TV whilst doing so. It just so happened that pretty much the only thing that looked remotely interesting on was The Devil's Advocate.




It was super interesting. Not sure why. Towards the end of the movie, the Devil (played by Al Pacino who makes an excellent villian) has a monologue where he talks about how he has been on earth, doing work to create this evil society where people think God doesn't care about them and that they should give into every temptation they have because they can basically. He talks about how easy it is to do that and how difficult it is to please God and talks as if God is a huge prankster for giving us free will and then laws to abide by. And as I am listening to this, I am realizing how right on most of it is. Obviously I don't believe that God doesn't care about his people. But the part about how the Devil has been working on turning the society towards sin is so true. And it was kind of a good eye opener. The whole movie gives example after example about how society has turned towards sin. Avoiding sin is hard. Giving into temptation is the easy thing to do. But we are supposed to avoid sin to be closer to God. And it is no wonder that society in general feels so distant from God when sin is what pulls you away from God. It is basically just a downward spiral away from God if you think about it. The more you sin, the further you get from God. The further you get from God, the less you avoid sin, thus pulling you further away from God. I wonder how much society would change if we (collectively) could pull away from temptation?

I won't give the ending to the movie away, but it was also a good lesson about how even after we learn lessons and choose righteousness over sin, the Devil is right back at it, working away and challenging us all over again.

I don't know if I was just open to the message of the movie or what, but it was definitely a good lesson for me. It spoke to me. Just something to think about.

The movie also tries to paint lawyers in a very bad light, but I won't take that message to heart. :)



Love, Mrs. Janney