One year ago today, we went to Lego Club at the Library. My 5-year-old had been talking nonstop about Legos, and I didn’t want them in the house. I wanted to nurture her interests though, so I compromised and agreed to go to the weekly Lego club down the street. “Club” is really a misnomer—they just pulled disorganized boxes of Legos out and let the kids go to town.
The kid sitting next to us had a snotty nose and I can remember being totally grossed out. Even pre-covid, I never understood why parents would take their kids out in public with snot hanging from their nose. Just keep your snotty kids home please! The rest of us don’t want to have to wipe up snot for the next week. It’s really just common courtesy to other parents, ya know?
I moved my kids to the end of the table and sat next to the snotty-nosed kid. Maybe that way my kids wouldn’t end up snotty nosed. If one of us was going to get sick, I’d rather it be me. In my annoyance, I almost missed the creation that was taking shape before me.
“What are you making?” I asked my oldest, who had just turned 8.
“Church,” she replied. “See the organ? And that’s Mr Ted. And over here is Pastor Anne. She’s doing Communion. I have to make the pews and the people next.”
By the time she was done, it looked just like the Sanctuary we had learned to call home. All the way down to the Christ candle and the people in the pews.
This church was fairly new to us, we found it just a year before. Although the congregation was largely made up of people much older than us, it felt like home from the moment we first walked in. It was a place that welcomed us with open arms, even if we were the only family with small kids in the pews on more Sundays than not. We could truly come as we were and be loved and accepted.
Little did we know that we wouldn’t set foot in that Sanctuary the rest of the year. Little did we know that in six months, our beloved pastor would retire and we wouldn’t get to hug her neck before saying goodbye. Little did we know we’d already had Holy Communion for the last time in who knows how long. Little did I know this tiny little Lego Sanctuary would speak such loud volumes to me now.
I snapped a picture and sent it to my husband, and then to our pastor, impressed with my kid’s desire to build a Sanctuary from Legos.
When our time was up, we cleaned up the Legos, left the room and went the bathroom to wash our hands. Then we went home, fairly certain that none of us caught some terrible disease.
I wish I had snuck that Lego Sanctuary out of the library that day. I wish I had known how special that memory would become. It was the first of many lasts for a very long time.
This post was written in response to 10 Things To Tell You Podcast Episode 106: 10 Questions to Mark One Year of the Pandemic. What was your life like in early 2020?