The wife and I went to church today, me clad in my purple Chuck Taylors, bowling T-shirt and jeans.  I'm a casual kind of gal and figure the baby Jesus doesn't really care what I look like when hanging out in a house of worship.  Come to think of it, I basically look like a slob every week when I go to church.  Today was an on-call, anyways, so I figured I'd probably have to leave and thus who wants to wear dress clothes to go unclog a toilet or take someone to the emergency room?  I knew the minister wouldn't be there, because she had called to warn me, but she had secured a speaker and already had a pulpit assistant, so all was set in place.  I staked out my space, Slobs for Jesus, in the third row.

Imagine my surprise when the scheduled substitute speaker told me I would be leading the service and that he was only giving the talk--he was leaving the rest to me.  Introduction, Invocations, Announcements, Readings, Offertory, Meditation, Singing...you name it, I'd be doing it. I looked down at my clothes, looked up at him, looked down at my clothes, shrugged my shoulders and worked my way to the pulpit.

Sometimes, I keep a change of clothes in my car.  I thought about it, envisioning my car trunk contents...only to realize all I had in there was a spare pair of undies, a baseball hat and some "pee pee pads" for clients who happen to have a habit of leaving behind car seat "gifts of gold."  No help there.  Chucks and T-shirt would have to do.

I knew I should have done my hair and plucked my eyebrows.  Damn.

I turned to the wife and warned her if my phone rang, she'd have to take over.  She looked like she was going to throw up.  I imagined a bubble of love around my phone and asked it not to ring until the end of service.

I must say, it was like the circus was in town.  Oh, I got most of it right, but the organist had to cue me several times to remember this or that.  He was very polite about it.  Thank god he was paying attention because I sure wouldn't have remembered all that was supposed to be remembered. I had to make up the announcements, which would have been better had I the chance to write them down first. I found it quite humorous to be "blessing" the offertory and found it quite surreal that any church would let a gym-shoe-wearing heathen like me belly up to the bar.  The sound room had some issues, which led to a bit more excitement to the day and the speaker spoke about cults, quite to our--well, at least my, surprise.

He was trying to assure us we were not a cult.  Good to know.

Just before the offertory and right after the meditation-non-meditation (part of the circus in town), my phone buzzed.  I looked down and saw it was one of the sites calling.  I turned to the wife and warned her it was show time for her.  Wide eyed and terrified, she loudly whispered her inability to do this part of the service, noting that she had never done any of "this" part.  After seeing her terror, I decided I couldn't do this to her.  I looked at the clock and figured we had about ten minutes to go.  Unless someone was on the ledge of a building, ten minutes would be okay to wait.  I figured if it were a true emergency--not a clogged toilet or a pill dropped on the ground or someone locked out of their apartment--they'd call me right back and then she'd have to take over the ship.  I was playing the odds, making me very sweaty and nervous.

Please, baby Jesus and gods of the Chuck Taylors, be with me and whoever is calling.

I think I may have led the fastest ending to any service in the history of our church.  People are probably still trying to figure out what the hell just happened. WHAM! BAM! POW POW! DONE!

(For the record, the call was about a client with a headache. No one on a ledge. My cure was to have him drink coffee.)

After service, I went downstairs to join in the consumption of the sweets.  I had to stick around for a board meeting, so I couldn't even squeak out after surviving the Service of the Slob. (Does anyone else find it humorous that not only do I get to lead service, I am on the church board? How do things like this happen?  I am the most skeptical member of the congregation and here I am doing things like this.  The baby Jesus has a very good sense of humor.)  I mentioned to one of the regulars about my clothing; her answer was quite fitting: "Well, that's what you look like when you're sitting in church. What difference is it that you'd be at the pulpit wearing the same thing?"

At first, I took this as "it's all good."  After a milli-second, I took this as, "you always look like a slob; why would you not look like a slob? You're a slob."  Ouch.

That said, I will not be changing my wardrobe for church.  I'm sticking with the Slobs for Jesus mentality.

On the way home, the minister called to see how things had gone.  I gave her a quick synopsis, emphasizing that we are not a cult but that the Amish might be.  (I think she swallowed her tongue when I said that. Hey, I'm just the messenger.)  I assured her things were entertainingly fine, adding that she'd never really know what happened as the sound guy did not record one peep of the service (in this case a very good thing).

If this ever happens again, I am gonna tell the organist guy that he has to lead the service and I'll play the organ.  He's always dressed up and knows the order of the service.  No, I don't know how to play an organ.

Details, details.