With Epiphany, and the end of the Christmas season here tomorrow, I feel pressure to finish up the Christmas memories.
The picture is a radiant Sam and Elisabeth moments before we left for Christmas Eve services.
Wearing their Christmas best, giggling together about all the excitement of the season. Santa coming! Leaving for Kansas the very next day! Church with candles! A new haircut (for Sam)!
Elisabeth passed on the haircut because she’s trying to grow out her bangs.
Which, because of our kids’ awkward hair, only makes it even more disheveled.
And that’s fine because the Hergenraders wear disheveled hair well.
If only we could have known what would go down (or up, actually) at church that very evening.
So, our church has a Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve. Sam and Elisabeth were beyond thrilled. Blown away, is more like it. Sam is going through a little fire-loving phase and an open flame at church was beyond rational thought for him.
Actually, FIVE open flames when three of those are held by children younger that eight years old (Nate was in the nursery) IS probably beyond rational thought. But M and I are nothing if not hands-on about our family’s faith.
Sooo…it was finally time for Silent Night. The moment Sam had been asking for since he was handed his very own candle.
I turned to him to pass the flame AND…
He was asleep.
Poor kid. All the anticipation had worn him out.
Probably a really good thing since this gave M and I the respite we needed to help the girls with their candles. M. leaned over to me and whispered something.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Watch Catie’s bangs around the fire,” he instructed. He gestured on Elisabeth’s hair so I knew what he was talking about.
And that’s when he noticed that ELISABETH’S HAIR WAS ON FIRE!
A section of her bangs was black and singed right up to her scalp. He quickly extinguished the flame, just as the unmistakable stench of burned hair filled the worship area.
Our pastor, who was sitting next to me, said, “Do you smell that?”
“It’s just Elisabeth,” I whispered back.
This may be when he began re-thinking next year’s Candlelight Service Policy of kids holding their own flames and how that was beyond rational thought.
I should have told him that it was really no problem.
The Hergenraders wear disheveled–and singed–hair well.
