Eternal Father, outside of time, You know how the invention of the clock complicated our world. Not content with that, we not only invented Daylight Saving Time, but “spring forward” in March, re-darkening hopeful Midwest mornings to December gloom. OMG, I agreed with babies brought to church yesterday. While some changes are necessary, this isn’t one of them.
Father, thank You for a church who can turn a business meeting into a warm, loving family affair. Though, OMG, two tables of desserts probably sweetened things.
Years ago, our small church held an autumn retreat in the now-famous Brown County hills in southern Indiana. Once, my girlfriends and I persuaded the camp director — my mother — to let us stay overnight in a cabin without a chaperone. No volunteers, so she had little choice.
That evening, we ate fiery cinnamon balls and SweeTartsTM until our teeth sizzled. We caked on blue eye shadow and painted our nails sinful colors. Transistor radios filled the cabin with crackly Top 40 songs. We posted a lookout for a boy raid.
Nobody. Stupid boys.
We debated who was cuter: Paul McCartney or John Lennon? We sorted boys we knew into categories: Hip and Drip. The church guys? Drips, of course.
Conversation lagged. The wind moaned outdoors.
We rechecked windows. Those Drips would never pull it off. Losers.
“What if kidnappers come?” Janie quavered.
“Scaredy cat!” Laughing, I turned away so she couldn’t see me shiver.
When someone attempted a shower, a hairy-legged centipede crawled out of the drain. Screeching, we scrambled to top bunks.
Then a mouse scampered across the beam over our beds. Screaming, we hit the bottom bunks with a championship diving team’s precision.
A faint light glimmered in our dusty window. Moonlight? The Drips?
No! Jack the Ripper finally had made his move!
We plunged outside into the dark woods, probably leaping over copperheads to escape Jack.
Mom, the little boys’ counselor, didn’t welcome us to their cabin. “Sleep, or return to your cabin alone.”
We slept. Sort of.
When my brother played morning reveille on his trombone (no trumpet player attended our church), we wished we’d never heard of Brown County. Given this cabin’s nonfunctional shower, we faced the day with greasy hair and back-to-nature fragrance.
Soon, though, we lost ourselves in stitching genuine Indian coin purses, eating hot dogs, singing and learning Bible lessons. Playing dodgeball, we smacked the Drips to demonstrate our everlasting hate and love.
All too soon, we said goodbye until Sunday school, when we would dress up and play nice.
Who knew that soon, Brown County church camp, with its fun-infested cabins, imaginary kidnappers and trombone reveille, would say goodbye, too?
For good.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What camp memories do you cherish?
If you still reside in your hometown, changes might raise your eyebrows and ire. Soon, though, surprises make themselves at home, part of everyday experience.
Visiting a distant hometown, however, shifts one’s universe. A once-busy shopping center has been conquered by Bennie the Bomb Fireworks. Why did town fathers allow trees to grow so big? That implies we’ve added rings to our girth, too.
My husband and I grew up in the same city, but our parents — and we — moved decades ago.
Now, new roads have sprouted like kudzu vines.
We’re lost.
Though I can’t find our motel, I’ve located the street where I failed my driving test. I remind Hubby that I’ve never received a traffic ticket, whereas I can point to the stoplight he ran to earn one.
Hubby and I recall our accidents: mine, near the high school, watched by God and everybody; his, when a coal truck smacked his Opel two weeks before our wedding.
We cruise past former homes.
“They cut down my favorite tree!” I complain. Without my permission, yet.
“Our yard’s taken over by creepy little gnomes,” Hubby rants. “They’re by my room!”
We tour our old high school. Star Wars technology prevails, even in drinking fountains. The school now boasts a food court instead of a cafeteria. Too many choices! A few familiar areas comfort us. We recognize the classroom where we counted red-eyed and white-eyed fruit flies for our deep, dark genetics project. His locker’s still nearby — next to my ex-boyfriend’s. A nice reminder of how lucky Hubby is to have reversed the situation.
We visit the ice cream parlor where not only I, but my mother ate hot fudge sundaes after school. The store where Hubby rented prom and wedding tuxes. The restaurant where I, wearing the world’s ugliest uniform, served customers for a dollar an hour. The pre-McDonald’s fast-food restaurant where Hubby donned a folded paper hat and baggy uniform pants five inches too short.
We visit childhood churches that nurtured our faith in Christ. We reminisce about our wedding.
Finishing the tour, we agree: Our hometown is where we live now, not where we resided 50 years ago. However, this place continues to impact us. Nothing will change that.
Not even a gnome invasion.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you visited your hometown recently?
Sunday, when I worship Christ with His family and grow in my faith, is my favorite day of the week. However, even a confirmed church lady occasionally experiences a Sunday that makes her wish it was Monday.
Those tough Sundays happened more frequently during my years as a church music director.
One unholy morning, my pastor met me at the door. He’d changed his sermon topic on the way to church. Would I please restructure the service in five minutes? Thank you.
Half the choir music had disappeared. Who steals church choir music?
The regular accompanist had left on vacation. Our substitute struggled, but she played loud to make up for it. During practice, I sneaked a signal to our young sound man, Dylan. Turn the piano down.
I fastened a microphone to my lapel and hung its little black box on my waistband. Dylan usually did a good job, but this morning, the sound system hated us both. After squawking and squeaking sound checks, I quickly made a restroom stop before heading downstairs to warm up the choir. Without warning, the microphone leaped from my lapel and dove into the toilet, followed by the clunk of the little black box.
I screamed, clearing the restroom of primping churchgoers.
Did I really have to fish the mic out of the toilet?
Ewww. …
Its green power light no longer shone. I wiped the microphone with a dampened paper towel, then tried to dry it. As I headed to the sound booth, I pasted on a toothpaste-ad smile and avoided shaking hands.
Dylan was also a church board member. What could I say?
In a microsecond, I evaluated my fib files. None came close to explaining this.
I held out the still-damp, $200 device. “Dylan, I dropped the mic in the toilet. I’m sorry.”
He stared, then whipped around to test a second mic. “Hurry! Service starts soon.”
No threats of dragging me before the Inquisition. Or the budget committee.
The little green light on this second mic shone like a candle of compassion. I rewired myself, incredulous at his forbearance.
Decades later, I remember that complicated Sunday, when I wished with all my heart it was Monday.
Thanks to a fellow Christian’s maturity, not so unholy, after all.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever experienced a complicated Sunday?
Do you also wish a superhero would swoop down and fly you to a beach where sunshine is the only butt-warmer needed?
My Super Swooper hasn’t appeared. Still, throughout my life, small-time heroes have popped up like crocuses through snow.
My family was staying in a church’s back rooms with no bathing facilities. Mom’s friend shared her old-fashioned bathtub, making the world a less stinky place.
Unknown drivers pulled over 1950s Chevys to give my young father rides to work.
As a preschooler, I pilfered a necklace from Etta, the Church Lady. Mom forced my confession before Etta and God. Both pardoned me. Later, Etta gave me a necklace of my very own.
A preacher gave me a Hershey bar and told me I could sing.
Serious hero points go to children’s education leaders who kept straight faces and saved mine. Assured any scripture memorization qualified for a prize, I recited Song of Solomon passages. Unknown to me, they weren’t about palm trees and goats.
As a teen driver, I smashed a pastor’s car, yet he maintained his religion.
At my first job, I dumped salads with French dressing on a lady wearing a white suit. She waved off my tearful apology: “No problem. I have six kids.”
A college student, I worked summer nights in a rough Western town. The cook drank coffee out front, wearing a snarl no cowboy challenged. “If anybody hassles you, I’ll break ’em in two.”
Less menacing, a couple with small children picked up my boyfriend and I for church every week.
Despite my future in-laws’ visions of a marital Titanic, they supported our wedding during medical school.
Other small-time heroes zoomed in:
An unemployed couple slid 10 dollars under our door.
A child brightened my tough workday by saying I was pretty.
A stranger, concerned about my pregnancy, pushed my shopping cart and unloaded groceries.
A snowplow operator cleared our driveway, with homemade bread for payment.
I’d asked a Burger King counterperson to reheat cold fries. Upon hearing I’d been dieting and hoped to enjoy a treat, she handed me smoking-hot replacements.
A young college student carried this old adult student’s backpack up three flights of stairs.
A grouchy, nonfiction editor didn’t throw me out for mistakenly pitching fiction to her at 8:00 a.m. She ultimately published several of my pieces.
A writing friend grabbed me before I entered an important meeting wearing a Chiquita banana sticker on my power-suited butt.
All these and more have rescued me. I can’t count how many times my family has saved me.
Who needs Super Swooper, anyway?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Who are your small-time heroes?
This post first appeared on April 12, 2017.
For years, I celebrated holidays by directing church musicals. One fateful Easter, I chose Watch the Lamb, which focused on Jesus as the Lamb of God. A live lamb would make the ancient story come alive.
During rehearsals, the cast greeted our lamb with enthusiasm.
Church janitors did not. “Do something before that animal pees all over — or worse.”
Why hadn’t I considered this minor complication? Especially as the lamb made entrances down different aisles.
Most Passover lambs in 30 A.D. did not wear Pampers®.
What other option existed?
God provided the perfect solution: we would cover the stage and church aisles with the burlap-like backside of my recently discarded carpet.
However, God didn’t send angels to cut, arrange and duct tape the carpet throughout the sanctuary. After two unspiritual, aching-knee days, all my bases were covered. No worries now, right?
Wrong.
Loony the Lamb had his own ideas about entrances and exits. A hay bale helped keep him quiet, but for obvious reasons, we avoided feeding him too much.
The 60-member cast’s noise made Loony more nervous than your Aunt Nellie. Kids petted him without mercy. Bright lights and heat caused him to hyperventilate. During dress rehearsal, Loony the Lamb collapsed onstage in a wooly, quivering heap.
Watch the Lamb? No audience would want to watch this.
Two animal lovers carried the prostrate lamb outside while we prayed — and Loony recovered. One guy built a pen outside the stage door where our prima donna cropped grass between scenes. Visiting hours were restricted, with no autographs. We did everything but paint a star on Loony’s gate.
Thankfully, he showed no new signs of cardiac arrest. His brassy baaaaa erupted only once during performances — during solemn prayer after the crucifixion.
Our ingenious actors shifted and blocked escape routes, all the while looking very holy.
One child earned my special appreciation: “Loony was peein’ on my foot the whole time Jesus was on the cross, but I didn’t say nothin’.”
Even after Loony returned home, I couldn’t shake off sheep. Scriptures about lambs leaped from the Bible’s pages. Jesus frequently called his followers His sheep. After Watch the Lamb, I figured He didn’t mean it as a compliment.
Nevertheless, the King of Heaven volunteered to take on the title “Lamb of God.” It meant daily life with stupid sheep and deadly encounters with wolves in sheep’s clothing. What God in His right mind would do that?
Only a King who loves confused, clueless sheep more than His own life.
Even one dithery pageant director named Rachael — which, BTW, means “lamb.”
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever participated in a pageant/play that taught you more than you expected?
First, we were advised not to go to church. Then forbidden to go.
What?
I’ve attended since a newborn. As a toddler, I sat on the front pew as my mother played the piano. Mom dressed my brother and me in sleepers, as we nodded off before services ended.
Sleepers! In front of God and everybody! An indignity not to be endured.
Finally, Mom gave in, and I wore proper church attire.
Our small church supplied infinite hugs. I played hide-and-seek after services with friends more like cousins. And the potlucks! I still embrace the credo that the church supplies the ultimate food for both body and soul.
Best of all, I not only learned the song, “Jesus Loves Me,” at church, I grew in that truth.
As a teen, though, I fantasized about skipping services. Later, as a busy church music director, I occasionally longed to worship per TV, where everyone sang on key.
Sometimes, the following prayer cropped up: “God, just this Sunday, may I stay in bed?” Worshipping while wearing sleepers sounded downright spiritual.
Then the coronavirus, a dark angel, swooped in.
Watching online worship while wearing bathrobes, our shaggy-haired congregation probably looked quite biblical. So good to see our pastors. To drink in the Scriptures, living water for parched people in a COVID-19 desert.
Yet, a cyber hug can never replace a real one. When restrictions were lifted, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Except those — including seniors — considered high risk.
As a teen, I’d wanted to sneak out of services. Now I considered sneaking in.
Could I lie about my age to attend church? What if a bouncer carded me — “She’s got Medicare B!” — and tossed me out?
Reluctantly, Hubby and I continued online worship. The small congregation practiced “social distancing,” as if all had forgotten to shower. The long-haired, masked group resembled a gathering of hippie surgeons.
Weird.
Yet, I ached to be there. …
Finally, when seniors received a sort-of green light, Hubby and I donned masks and went to church, sitting miles away from friends we’d missed so much.
My mask fogged my glasses, causing hymn lyrics to disappear. The mask contracted when I inhaled, poufed when I sang. Still, loving the church family voices around us, Hubby and I belted out hymns with vigor.
Despite the odd, reduced gathering, Jesus was there.
We and our brothers and sisters at home pray fervently that soon, we will all be together again. Meanwhile, we connect through prayer, technology, and conversations across yards, streets, and parking lots.
Above all, we connect through joy that “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Even wearing sleepers for church can’t take that away.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Has the pandemic changed your church?
O Lord, I thank You that our governor has opened possible ways for Your people to worship in person — though I, past 65, have been strongly advised to stay home. Sigh. OMG, I suppose that lying about my age to go to church isn’t a good idea?
O my God, thank You for seeing us through another time change. I feel for pastors, as yesterday was the crankiest Sunday of the year. OMG, shouldn’t the law that gave us Daylight Savings Time also fund high-octane coffee, plus 
three doughnuts apiece, to sweeten tempers?
*Title credited to Phil Callaway