Don't Take Me to A Funeral...my recent embarrassing moments

In my life I have attended countless special events with no notable embarrassing moments- again that was usually my sisters territory! I spent several years as an event planner and put together some fabulous parties that I am pretty proud of actually. I’m typically decently mannered and rarely call attention to myself. Unless I’m on stage I actually prefer to lay back in the crowd, my husband is the social one, not me.

Hello 2018 the year of what the heck is going on?!?!?!

January: As I’m running out the door of my house I grab a piece of dark chocolate to snack on during my long drive to Santa Rosa Beach for a gig. I forgot I put it on my leg when I was getting adjusted to drive and it fell between my legs. I use my heated seats year round. It wasn’t until after I played the 2 hour show that I realized I had dark chocolate that looked just like poo allllll over my butt. It stayed in the tiny holes of the seat of my truck for a week. Still can't believe no one told me. Every one said "Well we saw it just didn't want to say anything because we didn't know what it was." ...thanks friends, thanks. lol.

February: I slip and fall down on wet uneven ground in the middle of a big fancy formal party and hit my head. People run over to help me up I play it off and laugh like its no big deal. That was when I got concussion #1.

Then came the funerals …

March: My Uncle passes away. We arrive at the funeral which we were all very sad about. As we get out of the truck I remind my mom and my husband to silence their phones before we go in. Smart right?

My purse was giant and heavy all I needed to bring in was my phone and keys so I asked my mom to keep them in her purse for me. Moms are great, always helpful.

I was asked to sing during the service so I was sitting on the front row at the very end. My family was sitting in the row behind me opposite end.

1:58 pm the Pastor starts the service. He welcomes everyone and adds “Please silence your cell phones so not to disrupt the service.” He continues and begins reading passage of scripture.

Confident I literally think “Check. Silenced. Done. Did that in the truck. Got this.” I glance at the program to make sure I have my cue of when I am supposed to go sing. “I’m ready, lets do this.” I think to myself..

2:00 pm I hear an alarm go off and knew exactly what it was. My stomach sinks. My eyeballs get big as I slowly look at my frantic mother digging in her purse for MY phone.

My daily 2:00 warning that it is almost time to go pick up my kids from school…yes I need an alarm to remember, yes my daughter is offended by this, yes I have still forgotten them a few times. I never said I was mother of the year … after this moment clearly not daughter of the year either!

So my mother who is the most prim and proper, well mannered, always appropriate lady of ladies has now caught the attention of everyone in the church as she’s trying to find the loud phone that everyone assumes is hers and make it shut up. It’s an iPhone alarm folks, its not going to stop until you turn it off.

She’s like whisper yelling at me from her seat so much so I’m thinking eek calm down and look for it, yell at me later…my sister helps her and they pass it down 10 or so family members to me. The phone is now silenced and placed on “do not disturb.” We are safe it should not go off again as the Pastor continues his reading of scripture.

I feel my horrified mothers eyes glaring at the back of my head the rest of the service until we get to the cemetery where good ole Uncle Bill has to make it worse by taunting her about it.

She gave me the list of people I had to call or text to make sure they knew it was MY phone in HER purse and said I need to apologize to the Pastor and I can never EVER keep my phone in her purse ever again.

Fair enough it was pretty bad lol.

June: I get in a wreck and receive concussion #2. (Only relevant because I had to step out of the service because of it.)

July/Funeral #2: This service was called a Celebration of Life. We laughed, we cried, we remembered our sweet friend that passed it was beautiful. So beautiful.

I wouldn’t have missed this service for anything, she was a special friend to our family. My dad is a pastor and was asked to be one of several speakers to share about her impact on our lives. We are friends with the pastors of the large church and have visited there many times. We were seated up front on the 3rd row in a reserved section. We were honored to be there.

I do however still have concussion symptoms frequently. Anything can trigger pain music, light, chaotic busy situations, even just being tired can bring on the dizziness, pressure and headaches. This was a fairly long, but lovely service and I did really well for a while. When I started to feel the symptoms about half way through I was able to stuff some pieces of tissue in my ears to help cut some of the sound. Then when light started bothering me I slouched down wearing my sunglasses trying not to call attention to myself. When I had done all I could do and absolutely had to get to some dark and quiet my husband helped me out. I was in a lot of pain, but was also kind of emotional so no one really thought anything about our exit.

I was in and out in the back. Trying not to miss it, but getting the breaks that I needed. For the few people that saw me back there I was the weirdo in sunglasses with tissue in my ears but I didn’t care. I’m used to it and I was being as inconspicuous as possible

…until we start reaching the end of the service.

Scott stayed in the back with me and we both decided to head back to our seats before he dismissed everyone. We had been listening to the Pastor giving the alter call but we thought we had a little bit of time to get there before it was the "actual alter call.” Wrong.

As we start walking up that center aisle people start clapping. I hear the Pastor saying “If you want to get things right with the Lord today’s a perfect day…” I think OOOhhhh no we need to turn around, but we are half way there at this point we can’t. The clapping gets louder, people are really happy we are getting saved at this here funeral. I think Lord pleeeaaassseee let there be someone else heading up there too. But no. Here we are hand in hand, step by step walking toward the front in the middle of the alter call- then stop at our seats on the 3rd row.

300 people stop clapping.

Awkward.

The pastor moves on and my brother and sisters are bowing their heads to hide the laughter.

2 hour service and we chose the worst 5 seconds to return to our seats disappointing the whole congregation.

My Pastor Dad watched the whole thing play out from his seat up front with the other speakers and found the humor. Fortunately my mother was unaware until afterwards when my siblings informed her that she missed our entry. She has decided to leave me home for the next funeral or just warn everyone before I get there that she has no control over what I do or don’t do.

Just kidding she laughed like crazy to all of it- she still won't hold my phone for me - but she thinks its all funny.

After speaking with both families apologizing for my disruptive behavior we all agree that my uncle and my friend would have thought both episodes were perfectly hilarious and would’ve laughed at each. Both of them are greatly missed.

The pastor did pray for my head after the service. My family is now celebrating my salvation and my healing...