Offer it up.

My dear friend B's mom has used the expression "offer it up" for years. Having a bad day? Canker sore bothering you? Nothing to wear to the school dance? Acne breakout? Lost your tennis match? Well, offer it up. I had never really heard the expression until I met B in high school, and I admit that it has always amused me. I do believe in prayer and try to share concerns and burdens as well as gratitude on a daily basis. Certainly, I'm in favor of making offerings of time, money, compassion, kindness, and etc. to others in need. I hope the hubby and I can instill the importance of such offerings to our children.

So far though . . . it appears we're not off to a great start. Attending mass with the bub is not always (or ever?) a spiritual experience.* I spend my time rooting through my purse for items that might amuse him: lip balm, small mirrors, Thomas the Tank Engine, cars, stickers, and crayons. I am also in charge of doling out the snacks--fruit snacks, suckers, Ludens cherry cough drops (they are non-medicinal), Goldfish, whatever I can scrape up. My husband has the more difficult duty. When bub climbs under the pew (sometimes under multiple pews) and then pops up to surprise another family, the hubby goes to retrieve him. The hubby is usually the one who runs interference as the bub attempts to "borrow" the items that the toddlers sitting in front of and behind us are playing with (you know, the kids whose parents are smarter and more prepared than we are). For whatever reason, I don't ever have the right stuff with me. Our church has an elevator in the back, and for a long time, my husband and I spent mass alternating who would take turns riding down to the church basement on the elevator. I'm talking seven or eight rides for the bub during one mass. We have made progress recently though, so much so that the bub now gets an elevator ride at the end of mass as a reward for "good" (defined loosely) behavior.

The past two weeks, my husband has given the bub a dollar bill to put into the collection basket.** Besides affirming the importance of offering it up, the idea is to get the bub all pumped up to put the money in the basket and to hope that with the anticipation and donation process, we will have gotten through approximately two minutes of mass in relative peace. Last week, the basket reached the bub and all smiles and eagerness, we encouraged him to put it into the basket. His response was to clutch the bill tightly and say (loudly): "No, I need it." There was no prying it out of his hands. This week, we tried again, with less success and an even more pathetic excuse: "No, I hold it." This morning's refusal was so articulate and loud that it garnered laughter from those sitting around us. So much for offering it up.

For the record though, both weeks he has put the dollar in the poor box on the way out of church. It could be a deliberate decision, perhaps he is wary of the institutional church and prefers to support Chicago's poor. I respect that. I suspect it is that the poor box has a crank that you can turn and then watch your money magically disappear (indeed, after a baptism a few months ago, the bub put lots of money in the poor box--all of our friends in attendance kept giving him more coins to toss in because it clearly made him so happy--but then got carried away, and sliced his finger when it got in the way of the crank . . . offering even his flesh to the poor, NTB). Anyway, we'll try again with the donation next week.

Until then, if anyone has any advice for keeping a toddler occupied in church, send it our way. I suspect though that we'll just have to offer it up until the bub is old enough for something like CCD or Sunday School.


*in the interest of disclosure, I should add that we don't make it to mass as a family every week
**our donation is via direct deposit--the dollar is symbolic not evidence of parsimony