CHOIR PRACTICE

Inevitably, the pressure got to me and I sat down to check my email. Among the “59 unread messages” was a note from the director of our church’s boys’ choir reminding me my boys would be singing in the Sunday evening service and would need to be dressed in “dark pants, white shirts, and ties.” I made a mental note of this assignment. The next email was a birth announcement from a good friend. Like many birth announcements, she and her husband chose to include the popular birth-announcement Bible verse: “For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him” (1 Samuel 1:27). We mothers like to cite this verse and commemorate it on the nursery walls when we are pregnant and are staring into the sleeping faces of our newborns. Not so much when they start teething. Not so much when they smear poop on the walls.

So, I began the quest to track down the assigned choir clothing, which was actually a more complicated request than the choir director could have known. Just for starters, my boys refuse to wear any pants that aren’t shorts. As I navigated traffic to my second stop for dark pants, I began to think about the verse my friend included on the birth announcement and the story behind it.

The verse comes from the story of a woman named Hannah. The story goes that she was married to a man named Elkanah and like many women today, Hannah struggled with infertility. However, Hannah’s infertility woes were exasperated by the fact that Elkanah had another wife named Peninnah, who was a fertile myrtle and dropped babies like an AT&T wireless plan drops calls. Peninnah was not a nice person at all. Let us just say she would have most assuredly been cast as the villain on a reality television show. She did the Old Testament equivalent of cyber bullying and inundated Hannah with Facebook comments, tweets, and text messages flaunting her own fertility and teasing Hannah about her broken ovaries. Obviously, poor Hannah couldn’t exactly “de-friend” Peninnah because it would have been poor co-wife etiquette. Plus, Facebook “blocking” hadn’t been invented yet.

Although her husband loved her deeply, between Peninnah’s harassment and the reality that she had just attended her twenty-seventh baby shower in the last month, Hannah was devastated. Then, on one particular trip to the tabernacle, Hannah began to pray. She pleaded with God for a baby and vowed that if this would be granted her, she would give the baby back to God for the rest of its life. Hannah prayed so hard and with such fervor that the priest, Eli, thought she was drunk. When Eli confronted Hannah for being drunk, she (notably) refrained from asking how and why a priest could not recognize a fervent prayer when he saw one and proceeded to explain her predicament. He believed her, blessed her, and she became pregnant.

When her child named Samuel was weaned, Hannah took him to Eli and gave him back to God — just as she promised she would.

It took two days, five stops, and an entire tank of gas for me to track down darkcolored pants, white shirts, and ties for my boys. I spent some time crying in parking lots. I would finally find pants and the store would only have one pair in stock. I spent hours trying to decipher the difference between a size 5 and a size 6 and for some reason, without my boys with me, I was completely unable to conjure up a mental image of how tall they were, their waist size — I was pretty sure their eyes were blue? Or were they green? The store with two pairs of dark pants didn’t carry shirts. I realized flipflops were not going to cut it and my boys were going to need dress shoes, too, which evidently they don’t keep in stock in this county. And when I finally staggered home with everything... nothing fit.

I had to exchange all of it — now, with four kids in tow.

However, on Sunday evening, I delivered my boys to their choir director in black pants, white shirts, ties, and even new dress shoes. I cringed inwardly when I saw their white socks (I had forgotten to buy dark socks), but at least their faces were clean and their hair was combed. I kissed their foreheads and sent them in to the church.

With Hannah’s story still fresh on mind, I realized I get her. I prayed for children and (not realizing the full significance) promised to give them back. But unlike Hannah, I can’t just drop my kids at the church nursery and say, “They’re all yours!” creative than those who are right-handed,” by Richard Shears, Daily Mail, June 9, 2011: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2000973/Why-left-handed-people-ARENT-creative-right-handed.html (Accessed Februa ry 26, 2013)

Trust me.

I tried.

They gave me a little pager that vibrates when they cry and shocks me if I try to leave the church premises without them.

And so today, giving my children back means spending my sanity and time buying black pants, white shirts, and ties. Giving them back means spending hours in the car driving them to and from practices and rehearsals. Giving them back means I offer the best of them, not out of pride because they are mine but very humbly because they are not. It means I try to give them back gratefully and without complaining along the way. I give them back not to be “Mother of the Year,” but I give them back painfully aware of how imperfect my gifts are in mismatched socks. I give them back knowing their black pants, white shirts, and ties will never be seen from where they stand to sing. This is just fine with me though, because their voices are filled with promise.