Mother's Day and skipping church

At 5:55 a.m., my husband came stumbling into the bedroom.

"I'm sick," he groaned, plopping back into bed. "I'm not going to work."

I popped awake (barely), went into light-nursing mode — "Symptoms?" "Barf." "Pains?" "Tummy." "Nyquil?" "Yes, please." — and then promptly fell back asleep.

But first I said a little prayer of thanks.

Because today is Mother's Day, and all of yesterday I was plotting ways to get out of going to church. And here the Good Lord came through for me by way of an intestinal virus. Whew.

I know skipping church is not a sin, but growing up in our house it may as well have been. We did not skip church. You go to church on Sundays. That's just how life is. And when I spent a few years as a nonchurchgoer, every Sunday morning I felt a little guilty. In college, I went to a church with Sunday, Wednesday and Friday services and if I missed one, people noticed. Inevitably, someone would follow up. "Where were you on Friday?" And sometimes the answer was, "Well, I went to the bar ..."  And they'd give me that frowny face. You know the one.

But I didn't want to go to church tonight. Mother's Day services are my least favorite of the entire year. They are full of sentiment, the handing out of carnations, sermons about Mary, etc. People cry. There's always that One Person who had a horrible miscarriage, lost a baby at birth or very young or had to have her works pulled who is sobbing in the back row. Little kids run around and hand flowers to all the women to avoid leaving anyone out. Just kill me.

Our church was doing a baby dedication tonight. It was all adding up to one horrible service.

I am not a mother. But I want to become a mother. And I have been on baby-overload lately. My friend's little boy turned 1 this weekend and he is adorable. I love him. I'm reading "Some Assembly Required" by Anne Lamott, which is making me absolutely baby crazy.

When I asked TJ if we could skip church — ya know, because he's sick — he saw straight through my bullshit.

"Can't take all the babies, eh?"

No. I absolutely can not.

So instead we got McDonald's — because in my house, when you are sick you get milkshakes and Happy Meals — and watched "Family Guy." And otherwise I'm doing my best to ignore Month 7 off birth control without production of spawn. Because really, it's all in God's timing and I am honestly not that concerned about it. I'll go to my doctor in July and we'll have a more serious conversation and TJ and I will pray about how far we want to take fertility treatments.

I am totally able to maintain my cool on this issue. Except when I'm surrounded by fertile, happy, pregnant woman or those with newborns dedicating their children to a life of following Jesus. Then all my happy in-God's-timing notions go straight out the window and I begin to understand why some women kill people and steal babies. I sit in my pew and hate these families. Yousunsofbitches, I think. You just wait until I have a baby. My kid is going to be so much cuter than your fat horrible monster. Damnit.

There's just not a whole lot of Christian love there.

So forgive me, Church, for ditching. For chickening out and refusing to acknowledge that the great worship I'm sure you had and the hour and a half of being in God's presence with His people would be more than worth whatever discomfort I would have been forced to endure surrounded by all those babies.

My classic chicken sandwich was delicious.