Lessons from Sunday School...from Brian

The boys must figure this blog is too Erin-centric, because they're coming up with some blog-worthy stuff again...

Cruel mother that I am, I forced the children to go to church today. The part of me that is still an 18-year-old rebel tries to avoid being my parents; which, when it comes to church, means avoiding forcing the kids to dress up and pile into the car every Sunday morning. Ripped jeans? Skull-patterned t-shirt? No problem. Oversleep? That's ok, we'll go next week. I try to make sure we're there more often than not--after all, I don't let them go hog-wild with the Halloween candy and avoid dinner just because that's what they'd rather do--but I'm not super pushy about it.

Still, it's important to me that we do go to church often, and the more overwhelming life gets for me, the more I really make it a point to be there...and the more I use my parental veto power to override the boys' complaints. Erin loves Sunday School, which makes me happy, since if we're going to go, we might as well enjoy it. But the boys have hit that stage, I guess, where they find sleeping in or watching cartoons to be a better use of their time. I lured them into the car this morning with the promise of donuts.

So tonight, hoping that they got something beneficial from their morning after all, I asked Brian what he learned about at Sunday School this week. "Oh, we didn't really learn anything," he replied. "We just sang songs and stuff." Now, I've helped out in his room before, and I know it's not just all singing. "No bible verses?" I persisted. "Nobody talked about anything?"

"Well...we read some verses. About Abraham. How God told him he was going to have a baby, and he didn't believe God, so he decided, 'Hey, I don't believe that, so I'm going to try marrying my servant and have a baby with her instead.' Back then they didn't have all those laws about marriage, see, so he could do that. But God really meant for Mary--" I interrupted, "Uh, her name wasn't Mary." "Well, it looked like Mary. Or Marai. Or something like that. Anyway, God had really meant for him to have a baby with his first wife even though she was way too old to have a baby, and she did, and they named the baby Isaac."

I was nearly bursting with anticipation about the various life lessons we could explore here. "So God told Abraham one thing, but Abraham didn't believe him and tried to do things his own way, hm? So how did that work out? What lesson can a person learn from this story?"

Brian shrugged. "Not to marry two wives?"

Lessons in prayer...from Erin

Erin came with me to the grocery store tonight to help return our redbox movies (that were rented YESTERDAY, making this return ON TIME and the cost per movie just one dollar, rather than the $20 or so a redbox movie usually costs me!) and to pick up some laundry soap. She offered to carry the soap to the car, but discovered it was heavier than she expected. "HOLY GOD, this bag is heavy!!!" she shouted. Nearly immune to her attempts to mortify me, I just rolled my eyes and whispered to her that we don't yell "Holy God!" for that sort of reason; that expression ought to just be used in prayer, "like if you're actually talking to God," I explained.

Erin nodded. "Like if I said, 'How 'bout I call you holy, God?'"

Um...yeah.