Not singly and separately

Yesterday I visited my old roommate’s married ward for the baby blessing of his son. While the gospel is the same everywhere, and the organization of the Church is also the same, the sacrament meeting experience is not always the same. :)

You see, right now I’m in a BYU student ward, which means everyone is between 18 and 30 years old. Most people are looking for that fated eternal companion. And while I know it’s cliché to say that you can hear a pin drop during the sacrament itself, it’s pretty much true.

Contrast that with my experience yesterday. The buzz of movement around the room was like when you overturn a large rock and find a mass of crawling, writhing insects all in motion underneath. Babies and toddlers everywhere, the air punctured every few seconds by crying or a hymnbook dropping or the rustle of things that you never even knew could be so noisy. It was completely different.

Which isn’t to say that it was worse. Or better. It was just different. On the one hand, it was nice because I didn’t have to worry about the whole dating dynamic — everyone there was taken :) — and the kids were adorable. But on the other, it was a lot harder to concentrate on the speaker than I thought it would be. Every few seconds my attention would be snagged by some kid the next pew over or across the room, some eating Cheerios, one climbing up into the choir seats with his mother hot in pursuit.

Then again, it’s more my fault that I let my attention wander. Babies need tending, and families are an integral part of the gospel. That’s one of the other things I liked about visiting a married ward — it’s nice to be reminded every so often what the end goal is. Some people don’t seem to care about marriage and kids, but I do, and there’s something so fulfilling, so soothing, so healing about seeing real live families. It was a clarion call to me that it is worth all the frustration of dating, all the pain of heartbreaks, all the sweat and tears and agony. It matters.

Yeah, I always liked family wards better. The more variety, the better. Which is why I prefer to work in public as opposed to academic libraries. I visited a Universalist Unitarian church in SLC once, and it was really cool b/c the littlest kids were looked after during the meeting in a separate room (and the meeting was only 1 hour), so it was really quiet and adult-oriented, and then afterwards, everybody got together for socializing and snacks.

I learned a lesson from something a family said in Brazil. Accompanying some missionaries to church for the first time, the children in the ward were being rambunctious and what not. The missionaries were embarrassed for the behavior and as they were apologizing, the father stopped them. He said, “Don’t apologize. I’m sure the children were rowdy at church in Christ’s time as much as ours.” It’s the truth. Yeah for family wards.

Disclaimer. I was not one of the missionaries, although I shared an apartment with them and met during the same time, same building, but in another ward.