Motherhood Monday: The Man in the Grey Suit

Welcome to another Motherhood Monday! Motherhood is an incredible blessing. But it is also a huge challenge. Anyone that has experienced motherhood will tell you, there is an incredible shift in your very being when you become a mother. This is the day dedicated to all things "mommy" related. Check here each Monday for a new post. 

Today, I want to tell you about a man at our church a few months ago. He was in a grey full three piece suit, his hair was grey, and he carried an old leather bound Bible under his arm. As soon as he sat down in the pew in front of us my heart sank and all I could think was, "oh no".

Now before you go thinking that I hate old people I should explain something first.

You see I have two sons, at the time they were 19 months old and 3 months old and we keep them in church with us. We believe that if at all possible our children should be in the worship service with us. The reasons behind this are many:

• We (my husband and I) are responsible for training our children well (Proverbs 22:6) We want our sons to learn to listen to the sermon, take notes, and grow in the body of Christ. It's hard to do that if they are only on the sanctuary when there isn't any children's church.
• We don't believe in separating the body of Christ by ages. In fact, Titus 2:1-5 talks about the older people teaching the younger people. That's hard to do if everyone in your class is all the same age. We lose a huge opportunity to learn from the older and wiser when we break off in age brackets.
• Finally, Jesus himself said, "let the children come to me" (Matthew 19:14). If Christ (who only had 3 short years for his ministry) took the time to teach with the children, so too can we.

At the last church when my (then) 4 month old son made any noise at all (even just happy baby sounds) people would turn and stare. I kid you not. No other children were in the service. I then, had a chaplain's wife come and tell me how distracting my son was for her during the service. It wasn't like he was screaming, he was simply doing what babies do. After careful prayer and consideration we decided to leave that church since it was so unwelcoming of children in the service.

Ok, back to my story. We are in church, the worship team is about to get rolling and in come this older gentleman and his wife. As they sit in front of us I can't help but think of the church that we left to begin attending this church. I was afraid of being accused of disrupting again. My son did very well the entire service. He "took notes" with his little church toolbox that I made for him. He read his book quietly.

At the very end of the service he started to get a little antsy and I thought, "oh no, here it comes". But the old man never turned around. He continued to follow along in his Bible taking notes. When we were released the old man stood up and turned to leave. As he did, I caught his eye and he smiled the knowing smile of a fellow parent. He waved at my son and gave him a thumbs up as he walked away.

I wish I had told him thank you. 

So now, I am going to say it. 

Thank you for helping to reinforce that parenting is normal. Thank you for helping to reassure two newbie parents that we are doing a good job. Thank you for modeling how a Godly man responds to little children in the church. Thank you for being welcoming, like Christ.