Holy Crap

This happened to me many years ago. My wife, Therrie, was pregnant with our third child (Laura) and wasn’t feeling well on a Sunday morning. Being the spiritual head of the home I went off to church with my oldest son, Jamie, who was less than 3 at the time. My second son, Dave, stayed home with Ma.

Our church had completed a building project about a year earlier and we thoroughly enjoyed the services in our new sanctuary. Being the zealot that I was, I was unfortunately sitting in the second pew from the front. The furthest you could get from the exit doors. I think this was the organist’s pew and I liked to sit there to tick her off.

Jamie was with me and kept tugging on my pant leg during the song service. Being the spiritual Dad that I was, I tried desperately to focus on God and ignore my son. He continued to harass me to the point where I finally asked what the problem was. He said he needed to go to the bathroom. Not giving it a second thought I told him to go by himself. After all he was a young man now. He waddled out by himself leaving me to bask in the presence of God.

Our new church had a convenient new design. We no longer had to go down the stairs to get to the bathroom. Unfortunately for me, the wall of the bathroom was connected to the sanctuary.

The song service ended and the pastor was revving up for his sermon. The preacher is Tim Schwindt’s dad. He paused and almost on cue, a voice could be heard coming from the back of the sanctuary. In fact it was coming through the wall connected to the bathroom. The voice said, “Daddy, come clean my bum.” In a flash, the glory of God faded from my thinking and I was desperately trying to scheme my way out of this.

No one would know that I was the Daddy. After all, there were many dads present. As Bruce was about to begin speaking again, the voice came again, but much more insistently, “Daddy, come clean my bum!”

What to do, what to do? The voice would stop and reason would prevail. But sure enough at the next pause in the sermon, the voice came through louder and sounding a little angry. “Daddy, COME CLEAN MY BUM!”

I sheepishly got out of, what I thought was the most comfortable pew in the entire universe. And like a man sentenced to the gallows, walked out of the service.

Doing God's will is not always what it's cracked up to be.