Hot Mess Goes Back to Church…

In an effort not to raise devil worshipers I made a point to get back to church starting last week. I had stopped going about 2 years ago because of the following reasons:

1. They sang for 45 minutes the minute you came in. Look, just because you have guitars, drums and a spastic music leader doesn’t mean 45 minutes of non-stop singing is the right thing to do. My ears were bleeding by the 11th song. The last thing I want to do is sing, for 45 minutes, at 9:15 in the morning.
2. Upon announcing we were going to church, my sons would normally throw themselves on the floor in a fit of rage like I had just told them they would be getting 10 vaccination shots that same day. Because their meltdowns were so close together I like to refer to it as a Meltdown Metropolis as both meltdowns seemed to fuse harmoniously together like the way the continents once connected.
3. Meltdown #2 came in the form of the resistance to “dress up”. Dressing up, in my sons’ eyes consisted of jeans, a polo shirt and tennis shoes. I wasn’t making them wear a 3 piece tux for Christ sake, I asked them to throw on one of the most comfortable things on Earth, jeans. Their normal wardrobe is on par with a couch potato who occasionally gets up to avoid bed sores.
4. By now we were at church and they had broken my spirit. I had no more fight left. They would protest having to go to Sunday school so begrudgingly, I would allow them to attend church with me. I was sober during this decision. 5 minutes in, I’d be asked “when will church be over”. This would be followed by the same question asked every 6-9 minutes till I threatened them with solitary confinement (a.k.a their rooms).

P’s friend spent the night and his father and stepmother attended the same church. Slyly, I announced we would just drop his friend off at church and just happen to stop in and “see what’s going on”. To my amazement, they didn’t protest.

We got there at 9:10 and sure as the sun shines, they began to rock that alter with drums and guitars and 5 singers. The singers couldn’t be more different from each other.

Singer 1 was a 50-something woman straight out of SNL’s Delicious Dish. She was wearing 2 sweaters, had a haircut that I’m pretty certain hasn’t changed since 1986 and was the best singer out of all of them.

Singer 2 was the “prayer leader” and is the reason men should not be allowed to wear skinny jeans. There is no way, no way, he could have gotten those jeans any tighter. They were almost indecent. In order to really emphasize the skinny jean, he paired them with his size 13 Converse sneakers. At least his gold W.W.J.D bracelet was loose around his wrist.

Singer 3 and 4 were uneventful.

Ah, singer 5. Let’s discuss singer 5. Singer 5 was a brunette probably in her mid 20’s. Unlike singer #1, her hairstyle was a tad more updated to about 1996 with overly gelled brunette curls that were swept up on each side and pinned in the back. She wore rimless glasses and did not open her eyes at any point during the 3 songs. She kept them closed while slowly swaying back and forth like she was Celine Dion singing that her heart will go. Fast or slow tempo, it didn’t matter. She was in her zone and she was not prepared to leave. What made her even more annoying was she had the mic so close to her mouth, I thought she was going to eat it.  I really don’t even think she was singing. I think they just gave her a mic and it was how she dealt with stress or something.

To my delight, after 2 years of non-attendance, they realized maybe a 45 minute concert at 9:15 am in addition to the 30 minute sermon was affecting attendance because thank the baby Jesus they cut that in half! An added bonus, my sons cut their “when is this going to end” in half as well. Maybe I’ll go again next week.