does God care if i go to church?

i have both briefly perused and deeply read a number of books about church.

about my generation or your generation {you name it} and church.

it is one of the pleasures and perils of having worked in ministry.

but none of them answer the question i come up against each Sunday morning:

does God care if i go to church?

i know what many authors and theologians and academics think about it.

i know what many of my peers think about it.

i know what many fellow congregants feel about it.

but as i make other choices for my time and community on any given day, Sunday or otherwise, 

i continue to think about why i do or do not attend church.

my absence in a church - chair,  pew, or otherwise - is not to say i don't feel the yearning.

my absence is not to say i don't believe in God.

my absence is not to say i don't believe in the church as an institution, as a community.

but, what if church is not where one feels or experiences God?

what if one feels and experiences God: 

beyond the confines of any church building?

 embedded in the relationships built around her?

 in the ebb and flow of living, fully and earnestly?

in engaging in service to others?

what if one feels and experiences God despite herself?

i know that going to church provides an indicator to others about one's faith and 

going to church provides an indicator of one's commitment to the church and God and christian community.

i know that my going {or not going} to church means something to people.

but does God care?

scheduling chaos

I just sent my husband an appointment for a family pow-wow.

 We have been home, overlapping some hours, every night this week, which is a distinct variation on the last 2 weeks. But regardless of who is home when each night, by the time we get the kids to bed, clean up the mess of the day, and prep for the next, it is time to go to bed ourselves.

It didn't used to be this way.

When we first got married, I insisted we keep a family calendar.

It started off as a homemade wipe-off poster my friend Erin hooked me up with in college.  

It hung on our dining room door and we would add things to it - with smeary vis-a-vis markers.

I traveled a lot for my first job and had a complicated schedule while my husband maintained a fairly routine schedule; I am not sure he even carried a planner during the first years we were married.

Needless to say, I kept the family calendar.

A decade in, we would sit down periodically and reconcile our day planners {i love a good spiral bound planner}

It was an organic experience, one we were able to maintain with some ease.

However, a dozen years in, with 2 kids, 3 jobs, 2 schools, a private practice, adult soccer, kids soccer, after-school events, permission slips, conferences, random work meetings, family visits, car maintenance, dentist appointments, and dates nights {you know the routine} - 

life is too complex to have an organic scheduling experience. 

Two summers ago we determined we probably needed to be intentional about coming together to coordinate our lives.  Please know, this {intentional scheduling} is not my husband's forte but he has humored me.

We agreed to come together once a week.

We talk schedules, vacation plans, budget goals, family "stuff," and couples issues. 

We try to combine it with big breakfast or, at the very least, with coffee.

We are usually in our pajamas and, while our kids don't usually participate directly, the youngest plays independently nearby and the oldest orbits the table, listening in - waiting for answers to his life's requests.  

See, he is really good at presenting ideas for things he would like to do at the most inopportune times.  So I say "Daddy and I have need to talk about it," then place the idea into the family calendar folder, unable to deal with it right then but knowing we have a set time to get to it.

So now, I carry with me a family calendar folder {because I am still a paper & pencil kind of gal}, we both have smart phones, and we keep a hanging photo family calendar {mostly for decoration}.  Each of us is assigned a highlighter color and we start with the week ahead and work our way out as far as needed in order to get upcoming events on the calendar. 

Next we tackle the miscellaneous requests from kiddo #1 and he orbits our family pow-wow because he usually gets his answers. I love that he orbits because he bears witness to the deliberation that goes into the decisions we make which makes the no's easier to swallow.  We haven't had a pow-wow in a while and recently denied a request or two, resulting in memorable dramatics. 

Trying to explain deliberation after-the-fact is no salve for deep, despairing disappointment.  He also, for better or worse, can listen in on the topics we discuss and join in as he desires {which is how we end up talking race relations or apologetics or family dynamics and such with our 3rd grader}

So, this week I sent my husband an appointment.

Because we haven't met for a while.

Because the list of discussion items is long.

Because there is not enough time in a day to organically come together over schedules and decisions.

What are your methods for scheduling life's chaos?

the coffin was open

i stood at the foot of the cross, 

lights bright and buzzing {faint and persistent} while laughter and grief filled the space behind me.  

this was a setting i knew from my youth but everything looked different, smelled different.

familiar yet foreign.

i looked close at the man lying there, trying to see the man i knew and loved.

he was not there.

my tears perched along the edges of my lids.

as they fell, i tried to find something to connect this body with my grief.

his hands were gently crossed just below his navel, fingered hand on top.

i reached out, his skin was cool to the touch.

i nestled my hand under his fingers to reach the space underneath, where his other fingers used to be.

before.

before he started cutting meat. before i was born. before i knew that wasn't "normal."

i ran my hand across the callous of his stump.  it was unnaturally cool but i knew that texture.

i followed the contour of his callous and found his thumb. 

i closed my eyes and remembered sitting on his lap, running my hand across his stump, amazed that he could still move the bones and tendons underneath, without the extension of fingers.

i remembered working alongside him in the garage, packaging meat. 

i was probably just playing-acting but he let me believe it was work. 

he would run his solo thumb across the white butcher paper to smooth it and then tear it across the blade.  using his thumb, he'd point to the spot where i could stamp the package with its label. 

his thumb.

his very pointy, very long thumb.

and here it was: still pointy and still long, stiff with death.

i held my hand there a while longer, remembering.

remembering his smirk - the one my sister and i might have inherited whenever we get in trouble. the one i loved to capture on film, even though it was too mischievous for my grandmother to deem it a "great" picture.

remembering his deep pleasure in sitting amidst family, watching.  watching his children or his grandchildren, or his great grandchildren living in the space around him.

remembering his tales of people-watching or stranger interactions at turkeyville or mcdonalds.  

he was a lover of people {and sweets}.

remembering his faithfulness, childlike and tacit.

remembering his legacy of independence and purpose.  

how insistent we was, until the very end, to do and to be. 

for better or for worse, he was steadfast in his personhood and leaves a trail of family who are bathed in this inheritance.

remembering my grandfather. 

Ernest "Ernie" Boyer

{April 7, 1928 - April 4, 2013}

You are missed.