Ok. Let me backup. Here's the background. I'd volunteered to give the lesson for the Christmas Eve Childrens' service at our church. I arrived in a very organized fashion at 4:30 so that I'd have plenty of time to finish memorizing the story I was planning to tell. At 5pm, I was about 3/4 of the way through this task when the pastor comes to find me--wondering whether I was ready to get started, and also wondering if Jess and Evelyn were going to be there. "Um, yeah." I said. "They should be here in about 15 minutes--they're going to arrive a bit before the service starts." She looked at me with puzzlement. "The service is starting now."
Turns out everyone was already seated and waiting to begin...I'd gotten the time of the service wrong! Rattled, both because I'd not finished learning the lesson and because my own family wasn't present for this Christmas eve service, I rushed to gather up all my props and hurried out to the sanctuary.
Not a good start to what I was hoping to be a quiet, reflective, meaningful lesson. Despite lamenting the absence of my own little people, things started out fairly well--after all, I'd had time to memorize the first parts of the lesson. I talked about how, during Advent, we are each on a journey to Bethlehem, and how each week is a time for remembering (in turn) the prophets, the holy family, the shepherds, and the wise men. Then, right when I got to talking about the 4th week of advent and the Magi, Evelyn and Jess showed up. Their arrival was quite a stir and commotion. They walked right into the circle--"Hi, mama!" "Hi Mom!"--and noisily found their seats.
I started up again, but found myself stumbling over some of the lines at this point.
Just as I was starting to hit my stride again, talking about how..."of all the things the Magi knew most about, they knew most about the stars..." the 3 1/2 year old boy sitting immediately to my right passed gas *very* loudly. I tried to keep a straight face and to keep focused, but I could hear his family (5 members or so sitting directly behind him stirring and stifling laughs). I pressed on and got through the bit about the Magi. I then paused briefly, trying to bring back a sense of focus, calm, and quiet before beginning the lighting of the candles and the all-important part about the arrival of the Christ child...the mystery of Christmas.
It wasn't to be. Evelyn (perhaps inspired by that boy's loud, if wordless, contribution) seized upon this moment to report state of her own bowel activities. "I went pee-pee, mom!" She said enthusiastically. I looked at her, nodded quickly, and then tried to press ahead, but before I could even get started she added, even more loudly, "I went poo-poo too, Mama! I did! Poo-Poo!" It was clear she was going to repeat herself until I acknowledged her continued potty training successes.
At that point, I just gave up on the whole keep-a-straight-face thing and just laughed. "That's great, Evelyn," I said. "But I'm going to talk about the baby Jesus now, OK?" "OK," she folded her hands and settled down.
I went on. But all hope of a quiet reflective mood was pretty much out the window. I stumbled over some of the lines--having to improvise a bit at the points where I'd not finished my memorization. Then, toward the very end, I realized to my dismay that I'd apparently lost or dropped one of my props on my mad dash to the sanctuary. The cow from the nativity scene (who, I was to tell the children, was surprised to find a baby his manger) was missing. Oops. And, wouldn't you know, the only time Jesse chimed in during the entire lesson was to announce: "Hey, we don't have the cow!!!" So, much for my attempts to pass lightly and subtly over that little slip-up.
In the end, I don't know what the kids got out of that service, but it certainly gave Brent and me new insight into the whole story about the baby Jesus and the heart of Christmas narrative. The lesson is this: when kids show up on the scene, they can really shake things up--be they divine or merely human.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
