Goodness it’s Friday

Here’s a glimpse into moments of real life when you’re generationally living…

It’s Friday evening and Jeff is at church for the Good Friday service.  I have just returned from the grocery store with food for Sunday’s dinner. I’m watching the clock because I’ve determined that I will sit down and watch the service live. It would be lovely if it were uninterrupted, but I did mention the generational thing. 

The service has started and in the movie scene in my head – I am sitting in my favorite chair with a glass of wine listening to the piano and voice I know so well and pausing to reflect on this important day. BUT Raun, our oldest, challenged me to make April a dry month and knowing it was a good idea I said, “YES”. So I sit in my comfy chair, listening to the harmonies and readings of the service streaming into my living room without a beverage in my hand. 

A short while into it, I realize that a two year old has joined me and is circling around the coffee table in the middle of the room. At closer notice, she seems to be quietly reciting something. I smile and turn my attention back to the service. I’ve attended a lifetime of Good Friday Services and of any church service this is a dark, heavy, sad, service and the music tends to be kinda durg-y . But it’s a service that remembers the darkest, heaviest, saddest day, so I understand the durginess. 

Now the two-year-old has climbed onto the round coffee table making it difficult to ignore her. She is still reciting something. She scoots her bottom to the edge, and carefully slides off landing on the floor and flops a round a little. 

Scripture is being read on the TV screen that leads into responsive reading about the arrest of Jesus. The two year old pops up from her floor flopping and begins circling the table again. There’s a lovely soprano singing a beautifully haunting song as candles are being sniffed and the two year old climbs back up on the round table, scoots on the edge, slides off, lands on the floor and I finally am able to hear what she has been reciting, “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”

“Are you being Humpty Dumpty?” I asked. 

“Yes”, she said proudly. “I can show you how to do it!” She offers with great excitement. 

“Well, I’m listening to Hoppy…”

“But you can do it…”

“I know I can do it, but if I fell off the table it would be a big fall.”

And now the final candle is snuffed, darkness fills the screen and the harmonies of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” drifts out of the speakers and the little one climbs back up on the wall for her final fall.

Crosses, candles, Jesus, Humpty, tables, music, it blends together on this holy night and in a strange way feels as if it was destined to be this way.

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