It’s been awhile since I’ve put up a post here at About POPS. My promise to myself when I started this blog was that no more than a week would pass without a post. I have no excuses but this:

Do you ever have those moments when your commitment, or at least your good intentions break down, and you think, “What the heck, I’ve blown it now, so what does it matter.” You know like those times when you’re faithfully following your disciplined eating lifestyle, then you get invited to the all-you-can-eat-fried-catfish-with-hushpuppy place. “I’ll just have a salad,” you say to yourself on the way there. Then after your second plate of fried amazingness, you’ve passed the point of what-does-it-matter-now. So you stop at Dairy Princess on the way home for a chocolate dipped cone with nuts.

There’s a larger lesson for me here. I’m not trying to moralize all of this, hinting that there may be a lesson for you too. Just saying that for me…

When I was a kid, we went to Sunday School. Every Sunday. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember it like it was yesterday: getting my copper-colored Three-Month Perfect Attendace pin. I was now a decorated little Sunday School soldier, with my eye on that silver Six-Month pin, learning not to hide my little light under a bushel (hold cupped hand over the raised index finger of the other hand, then rapidly move it).

Another six months pass. During a ceremony in the Sunday morning worship service I was awarded with my "gold" One-Year pin. The next level for us little Sunbeams was more lofty: the Two-Year Wreath that would encircle our One-Year pen.

Sometime during that second year I contracted measels or mumps or malaria, I don’t remember which. My perfect-attendance track ended. When it comes to pursuit of perfect attendance pins in the Baptist Church there may be “Amazing Grace” but there are no “excused absences.”

I probably had thoughts like, “What difference does it make now if I go to Sunday School or not?” That square on the Perfect Attendance Chart with no gold star haunted me and there was nothing I could do about it. But there were other; let’s call them motivations, to continue attending.

I’m reminded of a passage from a really good old movie called, “Kitty Foyle.” It goes like this:

Tom Foyle: From now on, you’re going to Sunday School every Sunday. Rain or shine, you’re going.
Kitty Foyle: But why, Pop?
Tom Foyle: Well, it’ll be giving you a little Christian upbringing. A sense of values.
Kitty Foyle: Oh. And then you mean I won’t ever sin or anything.
Tom Foyle: Well, it might not keep you from sinning, but by Judas Priest, it’ll keep you from getting any fun out of it.

So while there will be a few blank weeks on my Perfect Blog Post Writing Chart, know this:

I’m back baby.

BTW: the image of the little Sunday School family is from a poster project done by our oldest son, Corey. You can see the project HERE. This particular poster is called: Abby | Artifact 78 of 366 | June 10, 2011

In a book about the project, Corey writes: “I work in the church nursery from time to time and found this young family among the toys. Church toys have a pretty cushy job since they only work one day a week.”