Back Around

My son has been back at school for a week and a half now, and though I knew it was a big deal for him, I was surprised how much it has changed my daily flow (I mean, for the chauffeur it's not functionally different than getting him to and from camp, right?) and I can't believe how much I miss that extra hour of sleep in the morning.

The fall so far has been this an flurry of details and loose ends. I know from experience how important it is to get the church year started right, especially for the kids. The school year has a tremendous structuring force on the ebb and flow of family life, and we learned the hard way one church-school start-up that families generally formulate their routines by the end of the first week of school, and if church is not part of that rhythm, they might or might not try again next year. So this fall I've been really focused on helping my congregation make the changes parents were asking for, and doing it so that they would be visible and functional on this first Sunday of Religious Education. That is to say- a ton of details and scheduling and weaving in loose ends.

And this conference I'm working on as a volunteer seemed like a nice way to fill out my time last spring, but as the conference nears, the drive to get the loose ends tied up and make sure anyone who should know about it knows about it has added a layer of ends to tangle in the daily web. "You are a volunteer" I remind myself "there is a good staff working on this, and you need to have your primary focus on your paying job... I mean family. Crap." So last night I made "Death Star Popcorn Balls" with my son, and watched the Giants beat the Cowboys with my partner.

But the first week of Sundae School seems to have gone well- and there was an ice cream party afterward, which smooths over many rough spots. And all the speakers and presenters I brought in to the conference are confirmed and have their bios and photos on the website, and they are in someone else's hands now.

This Sunday will be my first full-length sermon of the year, so I tried to keep the week clean of too much flotsam so I could make sure it's a good one. As I sit at my computer wrapped in my comfy sweater with a now cooling cup of coffee blogging to ward off writer's block I feel like my old familiar life has finally come back around.