Another Sunday

I think one of the hardest things about Sundays is putting Izak in the nursery. I was moving right along this morning, feeling a vague sense of routine, feeling a wee bit settled... and then came the meltdown. Izak used to sooo look forward to his Sunday School class. He regularly asked during the week, "I go cwass?" ("class" for gliders, lol) He had a wonderful teacher, Mr Elvin, who would sit every week in front of this gang of two year olds, blow up balloons with a bicycle pump while counting to three, and then let them go, sending the missiles flying all over the room. He used it as a distraction to get kids into their seats and recite their memory verse. Izak would book into cwass, sit in the minichair and stare lustfully at those balloons. He would do anything to watch them being blown up, bigger, bigger, and then fly away! And after that, Elvin would pull out his Casio keyboard for beautiful, loud, happy songs. The B-I-B-L-E, Bible! Jesus loves me. Jesus loves the little children...

Today Izzy dug in again, melting, refusing to go in, clinging to me, sobbing. The real deal. Izak isn't a crier. He's generally very easy in new situations, cheerful, talkative, but this is not cwass. I am referring to it as playtime, still, no go. And today I couldn't help but sit there, holding him, crying myself. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this class. I think it goes to show the enormity of the change, upheaval that we're all going through. It also serves to remind me how wonderful Hamburg was.

Obedience is better than sacrifice, said King David in the Psalms. It doesn't matter what you bring to burn, how expensive, how fancy, how lavish. What God really desires is a heart that is soft to His bidding and will pursue Him with every fiber of it's being. I am so thankful that we are in IL, but today I walk in the obedience of the flesh. My heart lags behind. This is hard in many ways, and while I don't shy away from hard work, I am rubbed a bit sore by the reminder that in Matthew's obedience, in my obedience, there remains the figure of a little boy who wishes he were back home with Mr. Elvin and Mrs. Wendy, Miss Tricia and Mrs. Tammy... and balloons.