The Three Little Pigs and Other Weird Stuff

When my daughter was almost 2, her dad told her the story of The Three Little Pigs. I think he has a secret wish to be a professional story teller because he takes this role very seriously. At first I heard loud knocking (the wolf) and then I heard hysterical crying. There is consoling and reassuring and yet for days and weeks to come, I found myself explaining to her that the wolf was just pretend. She would wake up with nightmares and screams of “the wolf was trying to get me.” All of this from a few knocks on the night stand. Nothing I said worked until one night, I just told her that yes the wolf was real but that Jesus would not let him get her. And that worked. As it turns out, I was right: the wolf is real, only according to our first sermon in Fremont, we’re not supposed to be afraid of it or even be protected from it; we’re supposed to kill it.


As I’m sure y’all well know, finding a church home isn’t easy, but I’ve committed to no complaining (seriously, what was I thinking?) so this is me not complaining: “Yippee! What an adventure! Time to find a new church!” The reason this makes me nervous and not the least bit excited is that my history with church seeking is not the greatest. I tend to be one of “those” kind where the tiniest infraction sends me packing. I’d like to think that over the course of the past few years I’ve changed, but only time will tell. We were in Sioux Falls for 10 years and during that time, we attended numerous Methodist Churches; we eventually joined a Presbyterian Church and planted there for a few years until the pastor lied to me and about me and well, I guess that’s on my list of don’ts because shortly after that we started searching again before we finally landed at a Baptist church which secretly riddled me with guilt for the longest time because my Aunt Ida, God rest her soul, thought all Baptist were evil and that the only thing worse than a Baptist was a Republican Baptist and shortly before I got married the only thing she wanted to know was whether or not my soon-to-be-husband was a Baptist. My Aunt Ida (think Weezer from Steele Magnolias) was opinionated and loud and what some might consider to be rude and yet she was also very passionate and dedicated and I loved her with all my heart. And so it was hard in the beginning but I came to learn that while she was right about a lot of things, she was wrong about Baptists….at least the South Dakota kind (and I’m thinking just to be safe here, I should also throw the Nebraska and Arkansas kind as well!)

So, all dressed in our Sunday best (which means Coulter wore a shirt that didn’t have a team logo on it) we arrived right on time to the 1st United Methodist Church of Fremont, only to find that the website hadn’t been updated with the new Sunday School times so we missed Coulter’s class, but, as the usher assured us, this was “the rockin’ service” (to which I think he meant contemporary) and that Coulter would have a great time. After all the rockin’, a man walked up to the platform and introduced himself as the Associate Pastor. It turns out that the Senior Pastor was ill and, well, unfortunately for us, there had been no real time in which to prepare a sermon. (He’d actually had about 18 hours based on the story that he told us, but who I am to count?) He shared a scripture, “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” and then he started to tell us the original version (or what he called the R-rated version) of The Three Little Pigs. I couldn’t help get tickled with all his huffing and puffing thinking that perhaps here was someone else who had missed his calling as a story teller, but I also couldn’t help wonder why I was sitting in church listening to The Three Little Pigs. I did learn something new, however. Evidently Disney softened it up a bit with the 1st two pigs and eventually the wolf escaping because that’s not how it happened at all. In the original story, the wolf eats the 1st two pigs and the wolf dies in the fire. As the storytelling went on (complete with audience responses of “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin”) Coulter’s eyes get bigger and bigger. He looked at me as if to confirm this man’s story and I just nodded and said, “Let’s not share this with your sister.”

Before long, though, time ran out because it’s the 1st Sunday of the month and as any good Methodist knows, that means communion, so the pastor cuts his message off and says, “Well, we need to do communion, so let me just say this: It’s o.k. to kill wolves. We don’t need to feel guilty about killing wolves.” He related the story to killing the wolves of poverty and other evils and commented on how there’s no way to know if the pigs were lazy, that maybe all they could afford were sticks and straw but I didn’t get it and I’ve been trying for almost 4 days now and I still don’t get it. I’m frustrated that I missed out on a sincerely profound message on social injustice but I guess I just found it hard to go “there” spiritually….you know, with the pigs.

And yet God brought us to that place at that time, so I’m thinking there’s a lesson somewhere, I just have to find it. We certainly have faced our share of wolves lately not the least of which is the adjustment period that follows up-rooting a family of four. Coulter, who’s homesick and dearly misses his special friends, has struggled to find the exact words. When you ask him what’s wrong he says, “I don’t know. This place is really weird.” I assumed that he’s just struggling to verbalize his feelings, but the more I think about it, maybe he is using the right word. Maybe it does feel weird to have a new teacher and new rules and no kids in your neighborhood and to all of a sudden share a room with your annoying sister and to spend time that was usually reserved for friends and is now hopelessly and forever spent with your mom who tries to be awesome, but is probably, again, just weird. Yes, I think I’m starting to understand. Everything is different and different isn’t always bad, but sometimes it’s really, really weird.

It’s weird to sit in church and listen to your pastor how like a wolf. (O.K., there wasn’t really howling, but there was definitely huffing.)It’s weird to get so into character and knock so loud that your daughter believes you’re a wolf and cries hysterically for weeks on end. I suppose it’s also weird to tell your daughter that the wolf is real but that Jesus will protect her. Now that I think about it, we’re all just a little bit weird and I think we’re going to fit in just fine!


p.s. Sioux Falls friends, I had to just tell you that a couple came up to us at church and after visiting for a minute they shared that they had raised their family in Sioux Falls...when she gave her last name, I recognized it immediately as a Kindermusik name. I had taught 2 of her grandkids! This is a very small town! :)