Receive the sign of the cross upon your stegosaurus

Since May, we've been attending services at a nearby Lutheran church. Our little church-going experiment has been a fantastic success. I think we've missed two Sundays since Memorial Day, one because we were out of town. The kids are so ridiculously well-behaved -- I'd like to blame it on the enormous sack of toys and books I bring along each week, but I know that's only part of the package. Now is the right time to introduce them to church, because now they both understand how to play quietly and how to wait patiently until it's time to go to the nursery (because my kids really are that good, Mommy's Iron Fist Rule dictates that they can only go after the sermon). Though they don't participate in the liturgy, we know they are at least halfway paying attention. Isaac runs around the house all week humming the songs.

After spending so much time with our church, we felt like we were ready to join. We started new members' classes last Sunday. As part of Reformation Sunday that day, we were also invited up to the altar to receive a special blessing. Two members of the church, both older ladies in the choir, stood in front of Daddy and I and, at the pastor's behest, made the sign of the cross all over us -- our hands, our feet, our eyes, our ears, our shoulders, and our hearts. I held Jacob through the whole thing. He held a stegosaurus. When it came time for my membership sponsor, Olive, to cross my heart, she instead crossed the dinosaur that lay upon my chest. He breathes fire upon sinners now. Kidding!

Seriously now. It's hard to put in words how content it makes me feel to be joining a church, especially one where my family and I feel so comfortably inspired. It's weird -- I'm almost 30, I've been married for over 7 years, I own a house, I have two kids. Yet I don't think I really understood what being an adult meant until Daddy and I decided together to join a church, to actively and publicly take responsibility for the spiritual upbringing of our sons.