Church

Well I got my buns to church last night! Sometimes that is a pretty big deal for a mom with one kid taking a late nap (would have been ugly if I woke him up!) and another that didn't want to go.......... so I went all by myself. Sometimes I get frustrated that my husband isn't more excited to round the troops and go to church (but that is a whole different story). We go together on most Sundays at least.

Although, when I do get to go to church on my own I get to REALLY LISTEN. Listening can be hard with the family surrounding you. So I enjoyed my Ash Wed. Mass all by myself. The message I got was that in the catholic religion we have sacraments (7 of them to be exact) and in simple terms, sacraments are outward signs of something deeper that is happening inside of us. Ash Wed. Mass is not a sacrament but another outward sign of something much deeper.

Ash Wed. is the day that we receive an outward sign of a very important thing that is happening inside of us. We receive a cross of ashes on our forehead to basically show that we are sinners we are dirty with sin (aren't we all?).
Actually all churches did this until the Reformation in the 16th century(I didn't actually learn that in church but in a little book I am reading).

I like the practice because it puts us all in the same boat, we ARE all sinners! Sad but true. I looked around church a little embarrassed because I probably looked funny......... but I realized I wasn't the only one. We all had the cross of ashes on our forehead. I realized that from this point until Easter I need to really focus and become closer to God. I plan to do that.

The ashes actually come from the burned palm leaves from Palm Sunday , last year............... kind of cool, I think.

Then I come home to my family kind of feeling ready to start this journey and Kaila says,
"What is that on your forehead?"
So I tell her the what and why..........

Caden says "Mom you have something on your forehead, what is that?" So I tell him....... in the best way I can tell a 3 year old. He says he doesn't want that on him (he has always been a little bit of a clean freak).

So my kids learn something from me and maybe next year they will decide to come along with me and realize that we are sinners together and what we all really want is to work on becoming closer to Jesus our Savior.

I think we all want to become closer to God, but we have to tune out some of the chaos and noise in order to do that.

Stay tuned for my Bible studies, more to come this weekend!
Peace and Love!