Ask any mom with little ones: one of the worst places for a kid to cry inconsolably is church. Recently, Lily chose the prayer part of church service to throw a stunning temper tantrum. She was ripe for a nap and wanted to fight it the whole way. I took her out of service and into a stairwell, trying to calm her. Unfortunately, whole minutes passed, and I could not get her to stop. I tried it all– hushing, singing, bouncing– nothing worked.

I knew the whole congregation could hear her screaming, and I knew it was probably a huge test of Sam’s concentration to pray and preach through this epic meltdown Lily was having.

We have a beagle/jack russel mix named Archie. When we got him, he was only about 8 or 9 weeks old. At first, whenever we got in the car, he was always skittish, probably expecting that he was either going back to the shelter where he was trained and cared at before he came to us, or going off to another family.

Every time we left him home alone, he would have anxiety; crying and crying and chewing up objects in a blind panic. Probably because he didn’t trust us to come back. Eventually, Archie got used to the idea: He was staying with us. We were his people.

Almost a couple years ago, Sam and I went to Arizona for him to interview for an opportunity to work with a church planting organization. We went into the long weekend with high hopes and were praying that God would provide– Sam was looking for a job at the time.

Long story short, they didn’t offer Sam the opportunity, but they wanted us to see their “innovative” way of doing church so that we could experience God in the way their quickly growing congregation was. We went in, sat down, and worshiped through a carefully curated worship, a neatly-packaged sermon with four, easy bulletpoints, in an auditorium of people that were in and out within an hour and twenty minutes.