Episcopal Church Foundation Vital Practices

Taking One for the Team

by Richelle Thompson on June 6, 2011

It came out of left field.

We were in hour two of a three-hour softball game for 9-10 year old girls. After a spring of flash flooding and rain-outs, the weather turned to summer overnight, and our shirts were sticky with sweat. My daughter walked up to the plate.

In the next instant, I was thumped. My shoulder felt like someone took a baseball bat to it. I was half-right. While we were watching the softball game, a power hitter in the next field slugged a baseball over the fence and into my shoulder. I didn’t even hear the heads-up warning until the ball bounced off me and onto the metal bleachers.

No, no, I’m fine, I shrugged. Really, I’m OK, I told the bystanders, all the while knowing I was tettering on the edge of body-wracking sobs, the baseball adding to what already had been a grueling and anxious week.

When faced with the unexpected, we have choices: we can give in or give up. Or we can try to make the best of it.

At least I got some free ice.

The next morning at church, we worshipped in folding chairs in the fellowship hall. The air conditioner for the nave died a couple of weeks ago, and the church is on a repair waiting list. After a Sunday of parishioners using bulletins as fans rather than guides to worship – and with the temperature reaching 90 degrees inside, the priest decided to be creative.

The fellowship hall turned nave for a Sunday, with the altar guild draping the linens over a folding table and perching the flowers on the window sills. The organist rolled the piano into the back of the air-conditioned room.

We didn’t have the splendor of our gorgeous Gothic arches and stained glass windows, but it was still church.

After sharing the Eucharist at one end of the fellowship hall, we enjoyed a potluck feast at the other.

The only hard part: when someone patted my shoulder during the peace.

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