What’s one of the worst things that can happen to you on a Sunday morning as a pastor?

Well.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a beautiful Sunday California morning.
I thought, “Look at that! I beat my alarm!”
So I grabbed my phone to see exactly what time it was. 915a. The problem? Our first service begins at 9a.

The first thought that ran to my mind? “This is a dream. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!”
I wasted a whole minute hoping that this was just an awful dream. It obviously wasn’t.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, put in a whole bunch of gel in my hair, grabbed whatever decent clothes I could find, and ran out the door. (Turns out the dress shirt was slightly dirty. D’oh!)

I couldn’t believe it.
This has never happened to me in the 30 years I have been alive.
I was mortified. Embarrassed. And most of all, I just felt plain stupid.

I was trying to figure out what to do or say when I get to church.
Should I lie? No. That’s wrong.
What can I say?
Why didn’t anyone call me…?
AAAAHHHH!

I was trying to come up with a story, until I realized a sermon from my visit to Mosaic. One is a reason. Two or more are just excuses.
Simply put. I slept in. There was no way to go around it. I could explain why I slept in and so forth. And to a few people I did. But to the senior pastor, I shouldn’t give him the roundabout.

So I got to church. Snuck into the office. Saw a couple of people there, and explained my stupidness.
I went into the jr. high Sunday school and hung out with them.
As soon as first service was over, I made my way to John.
“Oh! You are here today!” said a couple of members.
*Nervous laughter* “Yea, I’m here!”

I walked to John and he just smiled.
I apologized profusely and said, I overslept.
He was gracious and laughed about it (the theme for Sunday was grace…).

It didn’t help me feel any less stupid though.
The whole day was thrown off. Later that afternoon, I locked my keys and my phone in the church’s office, so I had to walk over to John’s house and ask for the church keys. I came home only to remember that I left a can of soda in the freezer the other night. Yep. Exploded all over the freezer.

I’m still trying to get over this feeling of stupidity.
I can’t believe that it happened. On a Sunday morning.

There maybe some of you who might be saying that this is a way for my body to tell me that it needs rest or something. You’re probably right. I blame this on Dae, our intern. He made the summer tiring. 🙂

And it isn’t because my wife being in Africa (the soda thing might be, though).
It’s just me sleeping in.
Which bugs the heck out of me.
I am punctual. I hate being late. Being right on time is me feeling late. And for this to happen on a Sunday morning? Hoy ve.

This was just a case of me turning the alarm on my phone off instead of pressing the snooze button, in my sleep.

Needless to say, I went and bought me an alarm clock.

This will never happen again. On a Sunday morning.

Unless you know, there’s like a power outage or something…

Kidding.