Finding Hookers at Church

Wow.

There are few times you could put a title like that for a post and not be making it up.

It actually happened. We had a lot of hookers at church this last week. It sounds shocking, but it’s very normal when you know that small children are involved…

Double wow.

It’s true. More on that in a minute…

Where was I? Oh, yes, hookers at church… To understand why Rexburg, Idaho has hookers at church, you have to understand more about the weather here…

Bryun, are you drunk? Nope. I don’t touch that stuff.

Let’s see… oh, yes…hookers and the weather… So this past week we got a warm spell here in Rexburg and it was almost 50 degrees on a Sunday! When it gets that hot here, most folks walk to church. My youngest daughter and I had joined the masses on foot when she and I ran ahead to get a good pew, which means anything not on the front row. Racing past all the slow stroller-pushing-walk-enjoying couples got my little toddler laughing and cheering, and we got to church with her adrenaline pumping and her volume level turned WAY up.

And that’s how we entered the church foyer.

She goes running in, takes her coat off, and says to me at the aforementioned maximum volume, “Dad, we need to find some hookers!” Based on her removing her coat and my intuitive deduction skills, I knew she must be talking about hooks to put her coat on. Two ladies in the foyer happened to be standing directly in front of the coat rack, heard my daughter call out her need to find some hookers, and watched me point towards them and declare, “They’re over there, Millie.”

The ladies seemed shocked and angry. As we walked in their direction (and the coat hangers behind them), they stormed off as offended as two grey-haired call girls could be. I realized too late how it must have looked to them, and wondered if they were really upset or just acting like it. Two hours later, I passed them in the hall and the dual scowl targeting my forehead told me they weren’t acting.

I was still laughing about the whole thing on my walk home an hour later. When all the chuckling was done and the Sunday afternoon walk became quiet, however, I started to think about the incident in a much broader perspective. How often do I make a snap judgment based on a few seconds of observation? How often am I certain I know the heart/mind of another person because I witnessed a snippet of their life? If I knew their whole story, would I laugh more or (at the very least) cuss less at others?

Too often I fall in the crowd of short-sighted experts who are more bothered by people than interested in them.

Think about it – if we knew that the guy who just cut us off in traffic was thinking about the job he just lost, would it make us less likely to shout obscenities at him?

Would the three kids screaming in the grocery store be less irritating and the young mother more admired if we knew she was a single parent trying to hold down a job and still be a good mom?

What about the unfocused coworker you sit next to every day? If you knew she was doing her best to stay sober after a decade of fighting that demon, would we be more likely to smile encouragingly at her throughout the day?

How many ill thoughts do we imagine up for people because they annoy us? How many unkind thoughts do we inspire in others because of what we say or do while they’re watching?

Looking back at the two seniors at the red light coat rack, I can’t help but think that if either of them knew the whole story they’d probably smile at the whole thing. Looking back even further, I wonder why I didn’t go after them to explain the toddler definition of a hooker?

Maybe they had just locked their keys in the car, maybe they were worried about a sick friend or maybe they were having problems with a child at home…

…or maybe they really were hookers who were just upset that my little girl was on to them!

I’ll never know, and I guess that’s my whole point.