Mummy, you mustn't sleep!

Yesterday me and my son went to an evening mass, and when entering the church, after doing the cross mark with the water at the door, my son asked (loud of course) “the priest’s where?”.

Being an evening mass, the church wasn’t full, but everyone was quiet. I told him that the priest would come soon. We brought along some of his small cars to play with and a book for him to look in. He’s only been to Sunday masses earlier, and then the church tends to be more than full, so yesterday he got some space to move around in and to look at the other church-goers.

He walked around a bit, but when we were standing, confessing our sins and praying, everyone was closing their eyes and head down, he said “look mummy, everyone’s sleeping!” also a bit loud… and then when we’re supposed to kneel and I can’t do that because of knee pains, I sit at the front of the seat and close my eyes and tilt my head down, he said to me “mummy, you mustn’t sleep!” I smiled and told him I wasn’t sleeping, I was talking to God and Jesus quietly inside me. “Oh, talking to Jesus, ‘tly”, he replied. After kneeling for a bit we raise up to pray the Lord’s prayer, and one of the women raised up standing before the rest of us, and my son commented, pointing at the woman, to everyone’s hearing, “she stands, she stands!”

I try not to be stressed about my son making small noises and comments like these, but I must say it’s a struggle. The priest has told me not to be afraid of bringing him along, because it is better for us to come and him to make some noise than us not coming. That helps me. But I’m very conscius about what the other church-goers may think. On the other hand I wish to make him comfortable in the church room, feel somewhat at home in the house of the Lord, and to do that I need to start early. I want him to think of church as a good place to be.

My husband is non-denominal (he doesn’t belong to any church) nor does he believe in God, but he respects my beliefs, and he’s ok with me giving our son a catholic faith. It wouldn’t have worked, had he not been ok with it. So I don’t have him beside me to help me with the boy in church. I’ve never had any other man/boyfriend that my husband, so I don’t know how it is to be married to a person of the same faith, but I think it would be nice if he shared my beliefs and we were able to talk about it as two believers not as one believer and one agnostic. He doesn’t give me any faith input. But he’s good in so many other ways, so I didn’t let the faith issue decide.