A Sunday Miracle

If anyone has ever been within 100 feet of any church meeting my family is participating in then you are well aware of the chaos that takes places as we try to teach our children about reverence. I'm not even exaggerating. My three year old is the absolute worst and he is teaching his younger sister quite well. We are talking climbing under benches, running up around the pulpit, crying, throwing things, pretty much everything that is the opposite of reverence.

Our typical Sunday service is three hours. Broken up into three different blocks. 1st hour is Sacrament meeting. The most important meeting of the day. This is the time when we partake of the bread and water which we believe represent the body and blood of Christ in order to renew the covenants or promises we made at baptism. Currently we start church at 11am. I'm telling you from 11-12:05pm my kids energy level is through the roof EVERY. SINGLE. SUNDAY.  I mean in the last congregation we lived in we frequently had older folk cheering us on if we could make it through half of the meeting. Literally, this one older couple would walk up to us every Sunday and say,'You're doing great! They'll get there one day! Keep trying.' They were so kind but I'm sure all they wanted to say was, 'Man, I feel bad for you.' Or, 'Can you get those crazy mongrils under control?’

All the Sunday's blur together but I'm telling you we are a class act circus on Sunday mornings. I've found a few things that help occupy them from time to time that'll I plan on sharing in a future post but for the most part the most sacred part of my day is taken up by wrestling young kiddos. 

Naturally, as we approached a special meeting that our church has, called Stake Conference,  where multiple congregations in our area gather together to listen to speakers and hear instruction from church leaders I was not excited. You wanna know why? This meeting is 2 hours straight. No break. I shuttered at the thought of keeping my kids quiet and behaved for a two hour time frame during a church meeting. We almost didn't attend this time because it is absolutely exhausting. I'm am so thankful that we did because of the following experience. 

Because Stake Conference is so manychurch members   gathering we meet in a larger building designed to hold larger capacities. This particular building is called a tabernacle and is located right by one of the LDS Temples. The morning came for us to go to our conference. We got ready, I grabbed my church bag that I take to church every Sunday  filled with items intended to keep the kids occupied. I'll be honest I was still hestitant and a little cranky about going. 

Before leaving we prepped our kids for the upcoming two hour meeting and hoped for the best! We walked in and found some empty seats in he middle area of the tabernacle. As I sat down in the movie theatre style chair I sighed grumpily not knowing how the next two hours would pan out. 

To my great astonishment and relief our kids were the most well behaved they have ever been. I didn’t even break a sweat during those two hours! That was probably the biggest accomplishment of all. It felt like a dream, two hours of bliss. 

When we got home I could not wrap my head around how we not only survived a two hour church meeting but we survived it with joy! So I turned to my kids. 

‘Did you guys enjoy church today?’ Was the only question I had to ask to get my answer. 

Without skipping a beat my three year old responded with conviction, ‘We didn’t go to church today we went to the Temple.’ 

I was speechless. 

LDS Temples are very sacred buildings. Although young kids aren’t ever in the Temple, except on rare occasions, their sacredness is still important. It is always amazing to me that young children understand spiritual matters much better than we give them credit. 

Two things I learned from this:

1. The Temple is powerful. Inside, outside, across the street, in pictures, in conversations, everywhere. 

2. Church can be just as sacred as the Temple and I need to do a better job at communicating that to my kids. 

For now, I will relax a little knowing that I’m doing something right.