When other thngs are tough, I will remember. . .

I was sitting in church yesterday as I do most Sundays.  There is a part of our service called Joys and conerns.  I have a love/hate relationship with this part of service time.  There are more than 170 of us in service and if a significant number feel compelled to share and are not brief, we are very late gettin gout of service.   That is the "hate" part.  I am 30 minutes from home and there are Sundays when we get home at 1:30 instead of 12:30 and I feel a bit cheated of my Sunday afternoon.

But this is also the way we as a congregation know who needs our hugs, our help, or a kind word.  It is how we can celebrate and cry with each other and I do know that this is the "like" part of this service component for me.  I know we would not be the congregation we are without takng this time.  So I figure I am supposed to learn patience and deal.  LOL 

And this past Sunday a woman I know only slightly stood up. She shared a very tough medical issue that she will have surgery on this Tuesday and then said that she wanted to end with something really positive that happened to her last Sunday.  She said she came in late to Youth Sunday service and missed some of the early parts. She saw Rob apparently after service and said she was sorry to have missed his playing and would he play for her some time so she could hear.  He said sure, that he would do it right then, and sat down and played for J.  She said she just wanted to share how special that was, and how "neat" a kid Rob is.  Rob was actually not even in the sanctuary as the teen choir was singing at another church this past Sunday, but I was sitting there, feeling all weepy and proud. 

Parenting is a lot about doing things that you don't even know if your child is absorbing. There were so many times in Rob's early years that I wondered if he would be able to reach out to others and perceive a need.  He was never a problem kid in the way that other moms have written about.  DEfinately I never saw the behaviors that his foster family talked about.  But there was so much fear, and so much anxiety, that he kept the deeper part of himself carefully away.  More and more, that is not the case and I am so very very glad.