Today we had stake conference. It was our turn to do the broadcast regional-stake conference thing, and so we went to "a different church" as Ezra put it (not the Catholic Church, but just the stake center). Our stake is pretty huge, and we don't really fit in our stake center chapel-cultural hall. They set up TVs in all of the classrooms, and we ended up in the Primary room--along with many other families with small children. Hmmmm. You can guess at the noise level in that room. I have to admit to not getting much out of the last hour, as Bradley was in the hallway with Mercy, and I was wrestling with an increasingly-tired and bored Ezra. I even thought of leaving a time or two--what was the point of being there if I couldn't even hear?
Then (finally!) came the closing hymn, sung by the choir: "Redeemer of Israel". When the choir sang, "How long we have wandered/As strangers in sin/And cried in the desert for thee" and then "Fear not, and be just/For the kingdom is ours/The hour of redemption is near"...I just felt all my frustrations of the past two hours (or the past two weeks) melt away, and it suddenly all became worth it. Fear not! The kingdom is ours, and the hour of redemption is near! What a wonderful message--and I would have missed it if we had left early. I'm really glad we stayed.
I remember my mother telling me that there had been months at a time when she felt like she got NOTHING out of church because of her small children. But she kept going because a) she'd made a covenant to attend her church meetings and b) she needed to set an example to the older children. I've discovered a third reason for myself--you never know when a seemingly small thing, maybe even at the very end of the meeting, will lift you up and make all the trouble worth it.
