King had to do a biography book report at school. It had to be on somebody famous who has had a positive impact on the world. I thought, "Well, Jesus, of course!" But doing a book report on the Bible seemed a bit ambitious, so King made the obvious second choice: Andy Warhol.

The assignment included a written report, an oral presentation with visuals, and each student had to come to school dressed as their biographical subject. To King's utter disappointment, we could not find a picture of Mr. Warhol wearing anything but a shirt and tie. As he was lamenting the fact that his "out of uniform" day was being totally ruined, I added salt to his wounds by commenting, "We should have stuck with Jesus - he got to walk around in his bathrobe all day."

King settled for wearing a non-uniform shirt and tie with jeans and sneakers. I found one of my wigs (yes, I have a collection of wigs) and hacked the hair down from a page-boy to a bowl-cut. We popped the lenses out of a pair of my sunglasses, and voila... Carol Channing!

A letter written to our church administrators warning them of a prayer request my four year insisted I write in our church's "Prayer Request Book".

 

Dear Kathy & Julia,

Our preschoolers LOVE to pray. My heart leaps with joy every time I walk into the Preschool Sunday School classroom and see those little guys kneeling down, faces to the floor with their eyes covered talking to God. Michael is no exception. He loves to pray... especially out loud and in public. If I allowed it, he would raise his hand every Sunday to ask Chris to pray for him and then raise his hand again for an unspoken request. I am often torn between wanting to encourage him in his love of prayer (however immature and perhaps selfishly motivated it might be) and not wanting to over-run an already lengthy intercessory prayer time with his prayers for his stuffed elephant. So when the prayer-book format was established, it provided me an avenue of escape from my dilemma. When he raises his hand for prayer, I tell him "This time is only for urgent requests and praises for answered prayer. We can write your prayer in the book." However, up until yesterday, this conversation would usually come up after the prayer book had already passed by and I'd always forget to go get one after the service.

This brings me to the subject of Michael's prayer request yesterday. We got out the book and the pen and I asked him what he wanted to pray for, "do you want to thank God for something, or ask him for something?" (At first he wanted to write it himself, but I told him if we wanted Pastor Chris to be able to actually read it, he better let me do it). He said he wanted to ask God for something. "OK, what?" He put his hands over his eyes and said, "Please, God, don't let me die." Hmmm. I could imagine you guys reading this with worried looks on your faces. I suggested to him that maybe he was asking God to "keep him safe," which sounded a little less morbid to me, and he agreed to let me add that in.

Now there is a little background story to all this, which explains (a little) why Michael is pondering his mortality. Saturday, after going out for breakfast, he bolted away from us in the parking lot. Both Curtis and I laid into him about the dangers of running loose in a parking lot, namely that "he could get run over and die!" In true "Curtis" fashion, Michael started arguing his case for running in the parking lot by pointing out that perhaps the wheels would not get him and he could slip through unscathed between the tires. Obviously, we had not made our point strongly enough, so Curtis bluntly says, "No, you'd be dead. Gone! No more Michael!" Not willing to give up so easily, Michael points out that he "really wouldn't be dead because he would be alive with Christ in heaven." This was a very good point, and we were very pleased that he was applying spiritual matters to his everyday life. However, we did not feel this was furthering our case for "not running through a parking lot when you're only three feet tall." The discussion continued, leading us to point out that you must really trust in Jesus before you can go to heaven. He thought on this for a bit and came to the conclusion that "there are no kids in heaven, only babies and adults" and wanted to know, "why was that?"

So that's the explanation behind Michael's prayer request. By the way, I will also be submitting this story with my application for "Christian Parent of the Year", along with my answer to Michael's other recent question, "Was I in God's mind or in your tummy when you and Dad got married?"

Peace, Sisters.

 -S

I agreed to get up in front of our church congregation on Sunday and give a prayer of praise during the worship service. All that morning before the service I had this increasing feeling of dread, growing to severe anxiety, culminating in all-out stomach-turning terror. By the time I picked King up from his dad's house to take him to church, I was already shaking.

 "King," I explained, "Mama has to pray during church today, so when I go up to the front, you stay in your seat. Okay? Mama's really nervous about it."

"You are going to pray out loud?"

"Yes."

"All by yourself?"

"Yes."

"In front of everybody?" 

"Stop! You are making it worse!"

"It'll be okay, Mom. It'll be okay. It really will, even if everybody laughs at you." 

 "Thank you, King."

After I parked the car, I turned around to King and asked him to pray with me before we got out of the car.

 We held hands and I began, "Dear Jesus, please give me the right words to say, because I don't know what to say..."

At this moment, King added, "and please don't let anyone laugh at my mom, unless she is trying to be funny." 

Amen. 

One of the director's of King's soccer team said to us, "if you have a complaint... volunteer." Curtis and I love that. But what do you do if you have a complaint about volunteering? I'm not really complaining... more expressing my stunned dismay at the disappearance of my newfound freedom now that King is in school. I should have known not to get too giddy.

 It all started when I went to school registration day. I should have taken Martha's advice and ceremoniously "thrown away all the PTA stuff". Of course, at private school, they call it a "club" (whatever), and it is not a nameless faceless piece of paper beckoning you to "get involved", but a gym-full of smiling women, who in reality said only nice encouraging things to me, but in my head all I could hear them saying was this:

"Surely, you are not going to leave this room without signing up for something? Look at us. We are volunteering. See, we are doing it right now! ...AND we even had time to shower and put makeup on, AND our houses are clean too. What's your excuse?"

I signed up to work in the nurse's office and to help with some festival, which I think is in the spring. I also signed up to be an "on call" volunteer, which I thought would be a relatively safe non-committal decision, however I now get emails asking for my help on every sort of thing; it's been a steady stream of guilt flowing into my inbox. I didn't feel too bad about my choices until I went to King's classroom to meet his new teachers and found that there were even more things to sign up for in there. I couldn't say no to these women. I would not become a footnote on King's file that reads "parents not involved." So I added organizing a class Halloween party to my list of commitments.

Even though I definitely signed up for more than I wanted to, I still felt my responsibilities were manageable and would only slightly cut into my "free time" (hah!).  But then came soccer. Upon receiving the third email from King's coach regarding the need for a team parent, I realized that no one else was going to volunteer. The job was billed as simply organizing who would bring snacks to each game and putting together the end-of-the-season party. However, the day after I agreed to take on the role of official "soccer mom", the coach forwarded me several emails from the league's Volunteer Coordinator outlining what my real duties were. I must also find volunteers to line the field with white paint, work the concession stand, and take orders on team photo day. The hounded was now the hounder.  I was also given a general directive to "protect my coach" from all organizational and parental concerns. It is the recreational soccer equivalent of the Secret Service.

For the final cherry atop my volunteering sundae, I added some new duties to my regular Sunday School teaching obligations at Church, including helping to organize the production, props, and costumes for our first children's Christmas program (it's really more of an "appearance" than a program, as they are only going to be posing in their crèche positions long enough to snap a few photos and sing one song, but not long enough to cause any major mayhem); designing and assembling a "thank you for visiting" card for new kids who attend our Sunday school; and putting together individual craft supply kits for each regularly attending child. I do not use the "cherry" metaphor lightly here, as this is the one area of my busy schedule that I actually sincerely enjoy. It is the sum total of my volunteering efforts that has gotten me down.

 As you can see, my dreams of having time to sit down and write in (dare I say it?) a clean house were spurious, at best. I am more a headless chicken than ever.

After drawing this picture, Mike pointed to it and said, "Fly."

Oh, what a moment! His first drawing that actually was something. Whether it was intended to be a fly, or it just ended up looking like a fly, it didn't matter to me. I was "ooooh-ing" and "aaah-ing" over what a talented artist he was, already planning how I was going to frame it and hang it with a little plaque reading: "Fly" by Michael Curtis (2005). Crayon on paper.

King, hearing all the gushing, came over to see what his dear brother could have possibly done to deserve such praise. He looked at the picture, and with excitement equal to mine said, "Oh, Michael, what a good job!"

The moment just kept getting more and more beautiful. Mother and big brother sharing their glowing pride in little baby brother's first attempts at artistic self-expression.

"It's a fly," I said.

"No, it's not," King stated. " This is what he was going to draw next."

He proceeded to "complete" the picture as follows:

"It's a flower... in a vase."

"Oh."

The moment was gone, as quickly as it came.