Crazy Days

Well, we're more than two months from Christmas, and already racing. I was beginning to get used to the slow pace up here, and now it's going SoCal on us.

On Saturday, our worship band led the music for a group of pastors and lay leaders from all over our region, at an all-day meeting near the lake. We discovered when we arrived that they weren't exactly expecting a band. The schedule named our pastor and his wife for all the music. I think they were hoping for some mellow duets. Well. . .

We caught a few complaints about hearing aids and the like from some of the old-guard Southern Baptists, but for the most part, they seemed okay with it. I think they tolerated us because we're so young and clueless.

Nobody made a fuss about Pastor Jason's new tattoo either. It helps that he's a church planter. He's allowed to be edgier.

Then we gathered up our kids from an exhausted Jenn (who managed her three and our four in two tiny rooms ALL DAY), and headed home to get ready for the youth service, which was suddenly happening at our house.

The sign on our front door.

Two hours later, thirty kids were packed into our living room. It was SO fun. I kept laughing at how absurd it all was. Adam came over and we led worship on the floor with the two guitars. I've never heard those kids really sing before. Some of them were GOOD. Then they scattered all over the house and the basement and the yard, learning how to spend time alone with God. This was so not what I expected from a life in missions, but I love it.

And yesterday was, of course, the normal Sunday craziness, plus a little extra. (After everyone had left from the youth lunch, one of the teenage girls walked into my house and caught me talking on the phone with my mother-in-law. . . in a towel. A small one. Oh, and how long has it been since I shaved my legs? Not a clue. Why was I not mortified by this? Because I am so ridiculously type B, I have no sense of shame. And now you know.)