Anna-thology

Oh my UNITED!!

What a concert! We drove like crazy people, four hours to St. Louis, stopping only for MCD and potties. We got there about 5:45pm and the line was already several hundred people long. Within ten minutes of our arrival the line had tripled. I had spoken to my friend LeAnn earlier in the day and she had warned us to arrive early, as they would be packed and folks probably turned away eventually. They opened the doors at 6:30 and the people went pouring in. We scrambled for a seat and wound up in the back of the balcony with alot of older people and families, but it was fine with me because we could see the big picture. You all know how much I love the 'big picture'!
I think it was really cool for our youth, from our tiny church, to see the power of thousands of people worshipping. Not just worship, modern worship that engages all the senses, more like a rock concert for Jesus than anything else!
I think my kids were a little surprised at how much I got into it. Heck, I surprised myself, I just felt so free, picturing myself in the throne room. It was amazing. I love modern worship, and that is one of the things that is tough about our church. We barely do contemporary worship, let alone anything as edgy as our slowest song last night. I realized how much I missed it. I also remembered the importance of individual worship, something I've been letting slack lately. I need to start putting on worship during the day, it really helps the atmosphere in this house. I knew every song, which was awesome. Eli and I worshipped together, which was even more awesome.


The kids lasted about an hour, and then we found the family room. We lasted in there maybe twenty minutes before Sarah started pinching other kids and I felt it was time to go. We wandered around James River. I tried taking the kids back into the service, but it was futile. We went out to the van where they had a snack and Sarah cried herself to sleep. It was rough. I'm going to find a babysitter next time we have an event like this, it was just too hard. The concert lasted until 10:30 and by the time we gassed up we didn't get the teenagers home until about 3am, and our kids to bed shortly after. Rob and I stumbled into bed at a quarter to four. We heard a noise and after a few moments realized it was the sound of the morning birds starting to chirp!! It was a long, long day. Sarah was up at 9am. I think we are just going to take it easy today. Rob wants to go to some of our teenagers houses and video tape them talking about what the concert meant to them. I think it will be really cool.

Well, that's enough for now. I'm wiped.