All’s Well That Ends Well!!

This morning started badly. It proved to me that I’m an emotional wreck at the moment. I was working on my Aunt Frannie’s eulogy for next week, and decided I’d skip the morning service at 10:00 am, and instead attend the sermon only at 11:00 am. I had promised to videotape the sermon series in August, and today was my friend ( Head Verger Dude) David’s turn to preach. I was really looking forward to his sermon. I finished the eulogy and left home at 10:00 am for the usual 20 min ride to St. Mark’s Capitol Hill, hoping to arrive in time to receive communion. 

That’s when the trouble started. At 10:20 traffic on 295 slowed to a crawl, and I was in the wrong lane to jump off to head to the Pennsylvania Avenue exit. Geez!! For the first 10 minutes I didn’t panic at all. Then at 10:35 I started to get a little antsy. Then I got upset when I realized that my car, that had scared me two weeks ago with a “verbal traffic update” that I didn’t even know was a feature of the car, hadn’t “updated” me on the traffic I was now sitting in. I wondered does my car have a “sometimes only notification system”? What gives?

I texted my friend Jan at 10:45 as she was already at church. I told her to start recording David’s sermon on her cell phone until I got there. I was now really mad, only having moved an inch in 6 minutes. I started to cry. Not exactly sure why. Then I called Tim and yelled about the traffic. I wanted him to move the traffic so I could get to church on time, but of course that wasn’t going to happen. What now? Poor Tim kept encouraging me to calm down and to stop crying. 

Unbelievably, at 10:57 the detour allowed me to get through the traffic and onto to exit at M St SE. I zipped by everyone onto 8th St and though I am not sure how, I arrived at StM at 11:03. I couldn’t have written the script any better. When I walked into church, the scripture reading was still being read. I realized at that moment that I didn’t have my tripod with me and would have to tape the sermon while holding the camera in my very shaky hands. Geez!! My friend Margaret saw my distressed look and came up to give me a huge hug while I got out my camera. I wanted to cry again. But didn’t. 

My head was spinning, I had been dizzy off and on this morning, due to lack of enough sleep I’m guessing. Just as David got into the pulpit, I sat on a ledge in the Nave and taped his sermon the best I could. I hope it isn’t to shaky for folks to enjoy because David was excellent!  His sermon’s end was very sad because he shared a personal story about visiting someone in the hospital as they were dying. I cried again (hope that doesn’t appear on the video either). 

In any case, after the sermon and commentary, I gathered my belongings hoping to just disappear from the church and go home. BUT before I knew it, people came from everywhere and surrounded me, wanting to know what was wrong and asking if I was ok. I felt truly loved. Only a few people knew that my Aunt Frannie had died, so they all hugged and supported me. I cried again. But this time, they weren’t tears of frustration in traffic or sadness about my aunt’s death, they were tears of feeling loved and supported. Right then, right there in church, my day began to turn around. 

All’s well that ends well. 

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