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From tired moms everywhere I make a plea to the church regarding sickness. DON’T encourage your congregation to come to church sick. DON’T roll your eyes when a family or an individual refuses fellowship because they don’t want to get sick.
I have heard mom after mom deal with it. Sickness. Hitting their home every winter. The biggest culprit is often times their church. Why?
Because people come to church sick!
This happens regardless of what denomination they attend, what state they live in or where they go to church. It makes absolutely NO sense to me at all.
The one place where we should be able to go and worship freely, without worrying about our children is the one place that in the winter time moms end up wanting to avoid. Why? Because of phrases like this:
“Unless you are on your death bed you should be in church”
“You don’t call off work if you’re sick, why skip church”
“Oh, a little sickness never hurt anyone, you need to trust in the Lord”
“Sheltering your kids isn’t going to help em, let em get sick. Their immune system will be better for it.”
“You’re not too sick to go to church”
Seriously? It is ok to miss church sometimes!
I have heard it from moms in comments on this blog, I have heard it from friends who live nowhere near me. I have heard it from moms in our homeschool group, at the doctor’s office, and at co-ops. And oftentimes it is the people who DON’T have young kids (or won’t be dealing with the sick children) saying it.
Wondering when to stay home from church? If you are sick, even just a tad, I ask you to consider a few things: T
- Think about the kids in the church.
- Think about the elderly.
- Think about the ones who can’t fight it off.
- Think about the mommas who lose sleep.
- Think about the parents who miss work to care for sick kids and the doctor bills it entails.
When you wonder why people don’t call off work, but they will miss church, maybe consider the fact that they are thinking about the above situations. The truth of the matter is that oftentimes adults don’t work with kids. They work with adults who know to avoid sick individuals. They don’t work with people who stick their fingers in their mouths or don’t know how to properly wash their hands.
When you label moms germaphobes, insult the new mom who worries about bringing her baby to church, or hassle the mom who wants to avoid fellowship, you are in turn making her feel LESS comfortable in the place that is supposed to be a refuge. You may reply she is to “trust God”, but the truth is she does! But as moms, we also have to trust that people have common sense and don’t knowingly go out and about when they are sick. She loses that trust as she hears leaders in the church insist others come no matter how they feel.
- Do you know what it is like to care for child after child, night after night while they are ill? Moms do.
- Do you know what it is like to wonder how you are going to pay another co-payment and for more medication after a second or third round of sickness? Moms do.
- Do you know how tired and exhausting it is to deal with sickness going through a whole household while you are bleaching, and cleaning and praying? Moms do.
The truth is when a church encourages attendance regardless of illness they are losing a good portion of their congregation. When children are sick who takes care of them? Most of the time it is the mom.
And do you know who you are missing in church while she is dealing with sicknesses at home? The moms, the families, the nursery workers, the Sunday school teachers, the young people!
So, to the churches regarding sickness from tired moms everywhere I make a plea. DON’T encourage your congregation to come to church sick. DON’T insult the mothers in your congregation with labels and snickers. DON’T roll your eyes when a family or an individual refuses fellowship because they don’t want to get sick. DON’T judge a family or an individual when they stay home because they haven’t been feeling well. This breaks up unity in a congregation and no one wants that.
Instead how about you choose to get on board with the majority of your congregation? Take a poll. Ask what the families in your church think about sickness. Talk to the moms. Talk to the elderly. Talk to the grandparents. I am sure they will all give you a few reasons why you shouldn’t go to church sick.
To Moms:
- If you notice a mom who has been dealing with sick kids for a LONG time, give her a phone call. Encourage her!
- Don’t be the offender! If your kids are sick, stay home.
- If you have to ask yourself if you are too sick to go to church, the answer is probably yes.
- If you are getting over being sick, maybe keep the kids with you instead of sending them to Sunday school.
- Consider taking a sick family dinner. We have ALL been there and that little nudge of encouragement can go a long way for a tired mom!
*If this is how you feel, I encourage you to share this post, speak out and don’t feel guilty about it. You are an advocate for your family and your voice deserves to be heard!!*
What advice do you have for churches dealing with sickness? What about encouraging tips for tired moms (like me!) who are sick of the sickness?!
Additional Resources:
- To The Mama Who Keeps Her Sick Kids Home From Church: THANK YOU
- Too Sick For Church? Why A Well Child Policy Is A Healthy Move
- Hey Jerk, Don’t Bring Your Sick Kid to Church
PS: Want to keep the well kids busy in church? Check out 10+ ways to keep the kids busy in church!
Wow. Just wow. Next time tell them to come take care of your kids, faith believing when they get sick. Geez!!!
I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is for these reasons during the cold and flu months we do church online at home. And I don’t feel guilty about it anymore. It’s simply too exhausting for me as a mom when all of my kids are sick. I remember one church we were members at and at a particular time when there was a terrible flu going around, and we requested sanitizer bottles in strategic places around the church and the response was essentially, we didn’t have enough faith and we ought to pray about it.
Exactly!!
You are so right! I’m not a mom, but I get tired of hearing preachers say “If you can go to work on Monday, you can go to church on Sunday.” My mom almost ALWAYS kept us home from church when we were little and got sick. We didn’t spread the germs and we didn’t catch anything else!
The biggest annoyance for me having half a dozen kids & volunteering to teach children’s church & in the nursery was having moms come to church with a very sick child because “I was so bored at home, I needed to get out. I was going crazy. She’s been sick for days now & I was couped up at home!”
1) you left me with a very sick, unhappy, ill feeling child so that you can chat with someone for an hour. It’s the definition of selfishness.
2) you lied when you said “it’s just allergies” in the middle of winter. Yes there are such things as yearly allergies, I personally have them but clearly these children didn’t since moms admitted it within ear shot to their friend. Yes, this has happened more then once. Sometimes I was the mom this was being confessed to when I wasn’t in the nursery volunteering.
3) as I mentioned I have six kids. Which means we are now all going to be sick for the next two months as this thing runs through each of us. Thank you every much.
Sometimes it’s not the church but the ppl. The church we attend had posted signs. “No Runny nose. No fevers. No vomiting, No diarrhea. No eye ir ear infections” no such children will be admitted.
It doesn’t matter though because these parents sneak their kids in then run off. If you’re busy with a lot of kids it might take you 20 minutes to realize there’s something wrong with a child. By the time we page a parent they may choose to “not see (their) number come up” and we will end up with the child the whole time.
It’s deplorable behavior and because the servants are rotated so often and Christians (esp the leadership) never want to “offend” or make waves, no one says anything. The rest of us reap the illnesses.
I feel this is also the case with the older children. We are encouraged not to tell the parents that their children are being disturbing & disrespectful. As a mother in want to know when my kids are acting out. However my husband & I have been told not to bother the parents with it. When we have mentioned it most parents have been completely insulted insisting this was the first time this had ever happened so we must be the problem not their perpetually disrespectful & disrupting children. However because no one in their entire time attending the church, had ever bothered to be honest with the parents about these issues they were shocked to hear us mention them.
I had one little girl kissing ever boy & calling every boy her boyfriend. When I mentioned it to the overseers they said “oh yeah she’s a complete handful! But we’ll handle it with the parents.” Only her parents were important ppl that went yo be offended so no one mentioned it. In didn’t know that.
She tried this on my son, I told her she better leave him alone or we’d have problems & she didn’t want problems with me. She’d constantly touch these boys, grab their hands, kiss them, force them to sit next to her, she tried sitting on their laps, etc… I told this to my overseers who said they’d handle it.
One day her mother comes in & tells me that her husband who’d never spoken to me was angry with me. I was confused. She said the daughter had told them she wanted to have her boyfriend over for dinner, that she loved him & wanted to marry him. The dad thought that I was allowing for their “blond beauty” to be harassed while at church and he demanded she find out what I was going to do to protect her. I nearly choked. I then told her she was completely mistaken. I explained that it was her daughter who pursued every boy in class. I told everything she did & how I had to spend most of every class trying to get her to stop bothering the boys. I told she tried to sit in them, hold their hands, kiss them. I told house she had a new boyfriend ever two weeks & when she got nasty & said I never told her. I told her I had been told that she was being told by the pastor in charge. I had no idea that she wasn’t being told that I need her five year old removed from class every single week & that this was the case with all her former teachers too.
She time her husband who then was even more upset at me. They’d the me dirty looks in the halls is the church them told someone I was making a big deal out of nothing. Mind you, how upset they were when they thought I was allowing their “blond beauty” to be bothered by some boy. This man was so angry he had his wife drop of their child beats he wanted to chew me out when he thought one boy liked his daughter. When he found out his daughter had harassed ever 5yr old boy physically, I was over reacting. Even though boys ran from her & the only way to get her to stop grabbing that boy she wanted that day was to remove her from class.
However had leadership not been scared to offend them they would have known this was an over one year long issue.
Yes! Same here. It makes NO sense to me why people insist on spreading their germs.
Thank you so much for this post! I identify as a mom of four and a former pediatric nurse! As a Sunday morning Bible class teacher in our nursery I immediately after class wash all toys that were used in class with hot soapy water. And I am part of a company who specializes in microfiber cloths containing embedded silver which effectively removes up to 99 percent of viruses and bacteria without the use of harmful chemicals. I am about to designate one of these for use in our nursery so that the germs can be removed but harmful chemicals won’t be used in the process!
I also want to know when it became okay to take sick people anywhere?!?! Over Thanksgiving I was sick and I got a lot of complaining about why I did not go to a family friends’ house for dinner. I WAS SICK!! They were like oh you could have slept on the couch or something… no. I was sick, I do not like to pass on my germs to others. My daughter is 2 and has a lot of health issues, so I do not appreciate it when I take her someplace and everyone is sick (outside of the doctor’s office that is). If my kids are sick they will miss therapy appointments, school, church, everything until they are well enough to go back.
Oh, sister I totally get ya! Last Sunday our family skipped Sunday school because the stomach bug is going around.
Omgosh 😳 Finally I feel like I can relate to someone about this issue! The stomach flu and the flu virus are both going through my church right now and I homeschool so my kids don’t catch the stuff from school and my fear has been thuan past week to not step foot in my church bc everyone is coming while their still contagious! I can’t afford to catch this with 4 kids and my hubby working an hour and half from home everyday! Ppl will make comments to me when I do tell them I’m skipping bc of the fear of catching something but truth be known I just don’t want my kids sick with this mess and I know it’s only a matter of time if we go!😢😭 thanks for the encouragement!
That is great! Not many churches do this.
Good points, thank you!
But there is a worry about the chemical residue left on toys. Hot, soapy water is as effective for germ control, without the worry. Many toys are dishwasher safe too, making them very easy to clean on the “sanitize” setting. If someone just can’t be content with hot, soapy water (even though it really is adequate), vinegar is a safer chemical option than bleach.
Thank you for sharing this. Thankfully, our church encourages sick people to stay home because of many of the reasons you mention. We have a lot of elderly and large families, both of which are hit especially hard from even “small” colds.
That is a very good point!!
Something else to think about is that some churches may not regularly clean their toys with a bleach water solution. I know my current church does not. I’ve only been in one church that actually required it of their nursery workers.
Oh Stacy I am so sorry you have had such a rough time! I am so very glad your friend shared this post and you found some encouragement from it. Prayers that your kids have a healthy rest of the winter!
Oh wow! I have not heard that one before, but sadly it doesn’t surprise me 🙁
Thank you for writing this post. My bible study friend shared it with me, and I have been experiencing so much guilt by staying home most Sundays with my 15 month old twins. At first, it was a matter of necessity as my daughter was born with a hole in her heart, and we had to keep the twins quarantined until she had open heart surgery at 6 months. After that, we started daycare and we have been to the doctor no less than four times a month (RSV 2x, Pink Eye, Roseola 2x, and colds galore). I can’t imagine exposing other small children to my sick kids, and I’m overwhelmed by the idea that they could pick something up in the church nursery. Thank you for recognizing how hard this is for parents of little ones and for helping me to let go of some of my guilt.
Our daughter was born in late September and was bottle fed. Our ped suggested we not put her in the church nursery that winter. You wouldn’t believe the grief I got including someone telling me that I was making my daughter an idol. Sad.
Yes you would be! Thank you for stopping by 🙂
Exactly!! People don’t seem to understand the consequences, and they also seem so quick to judge.
Thank you for this important reminder! One of my twins suffered from Reactive Airway Disease. Any bacterial or viral infection that would trigger a 3 day “runny nose” for another child would land my daughter in the ER and usually in the hospital overnight. My husband and I took turns going to church and left our children home for the first year, until my daughter’s lungs got stronger. And, yes, people questioned our commitment to church because we did this. We all need to be less judgmental and more understanding of other people’s decisions, because often we just don’t know the circumstances.
As the Pastor’s Wife at our church, I hate staying home when my kids have been sick (and they always seem to get sick on Sunday!). But I have to take a step back and remember that I would not want another mom to bring sickness around my children, and by staying home I am setting a powerful example that they will respect.
I agree Abbey that it is VERY unfortunate these situations happen. It sounds like you have a very supportive church! So happy for you 🙂
I just have to say, I am so glad my church is not as you describe. People need to know their God enough to not be dibilitated by other members comments. It’s annoying for others to put guilt on you, but its false guilt. Our pastor encourages you to stay home if you are sick as you will keep it to yourself, and also heal faster so you can get back to the Lords work quicker. Also families in our church help each other and check on each other so much itd unreal! I did grow up in a church that if you weren’t dying then you were guilted-but as I’ve grown in the Lord I’ve come to see that as a bondage Satan uses for others to abuse their “power”-we should recognize it as it is. And also encourage your pastors to use online streaming so tho you are home BC of sickness, you aren’t missing church.
Oh, you are so welcome!! And yes, I think often times some of the “older” ones are the worst offenders. But, I think it’s because it is engrained in their head that they “HAVE” to be there. Prayers that you and your kiddos stay healthy this year!!
Oh my goodness THANK YOU!!! I have tried to explain this to people, and you know what I still get dirty looks from people. Cough season is my nemesis…my kids get croup so bad they think it’s RSV and put them in the hospital. I cringe going to church and hearing people cough, and the elderly in my ward are the worst offenders–it’s so hard for me. Love them but NOT their germs. Thank you for speaking up in a way that’s easy to understand!
There is a product called Qore24 that works like a hand sanitizer but it lasts 24 hours. It works without nasty chemicals. Instead it mechanically shreds the germs. It stops hand-to-hand spread of germs. You still have to worry about coughs but it helps so much.
You can get it online or at staples or Walgreens. Please google it if you have germ concerns. It helps so much!
YES!!!!!! This is such a great thing to do. I am a Sunday School teacher, and luckily have an awesome aide/back up to fill in for me but oftentimes I still feel like I HAVE to be there.
I would just like to add that if there’s a Sunday School teacher who is a mom than go to her and tell her that if ever her kids are sick she can feel free call you at the very last minute and you will be a substitute for her. I know from first hand experience it can be hard if your little one starts coughing on a Saturday night and you’ve got a class depending on you the next morning. My husband works some Sundays, so leaving the kids with him is not always an option.
Well, you know if you had to choose between the goodies and the sickness I think we’d all choose the goodies as our pet peeve right? 😉
That is awesome that your church offers that! Thanks for stopping by and I am so glad this post encouraged you 🙂 🙂
Thank you for your thoughtful words! It happens every winter….I have 4 wonderful children and a husband, which inevitably pass around about 2 months of colds and flu! In the end, something will take me- “MOM” down lol! So we end up missing about 2months of fellowship at our favorite place….Church! I end up feeling so guilty, I want to go! I want to worship! I want to learn! And I want my children to grow in Christ!….BUT….Im exhausted, and I do not want others to become sick!
Thank you for making me feel better about my decision to stay home!
Fortunately, my church has a live video feed for service and worship that we can watch and my 8 yr old daughter loves to read the Bible to the family and write in her Bible journal. So in the end, we worship the Lord at home, and my children learn and grow!
Oh my! There is one so like your comment at my church! It makes me furious when I see her there after seeing post after post about not feeling good!
Thank you! My son is immuno-compromised and it is so frustrating when we get sick. My other kids can get a little cold that lasts 3 days, but when he gets it, it lasts 3 weeks. I can’t keep my other kids away from him, but I can keep us all home. We tend to have more Sundays at home during the winter than we do at church. I wish others would keep their kids home, too, when they are down with something.
Oh honey you just made me LOL! I think I laughed up a lung? Does that count 😉 I have SEEN this scenario so many times. It’s that same person who sends the kids to class or hugs your neck before church. SERIOUSLY!! Here’s hoping tomorrow everyone is healthy 😉
Oh preach it sistah!! I have 5 kids and my disabled and immuno-compromised mother (oh yeah, and that husband man too) so with a family of 8, I DREAD winter and flu season and going to church. Because somebody gonna post on Thursday that they are sick, on Friday we get selfies with the spiking thermometer, Saturday brings a play-by-play of either coughing up a lung or how many times they’ve puked, and then BOOM, on Sunday morning who walks into church? Seriously, it makes me want to shove’m right on back out the door.
DON’T COME ‘ROUND HERE LIKE THAT!
I agree wholeheartedly! I don’t think sick adults should be at church, either. One of my biggest pet peeves is when we’re in Sunday School going around the room doing prayer requests and someone asks you to pray for the rest of their family because they’re all at home barfing. Seriously?!?!? When my boys were little, it seems like we would go to church one week and then miss a week or two due to illness. Then we’d go back again and they would catch something else. It was definitely a nightmare!
My other huge pet peeve is that we can’t seem to do anything at our church without being surrounded by delicious cakes, candies, donuts, pizza, or other junk food. It’s way too much temptation for someone who is trying to avoid that stuff. But I digress…
Great post! Love the encouragement. Great advice.
Exactly!! When you have multiple children it is even more exhausting because it goes through EVERYONE…
I love it. I admit that when babies were in their first year of life, I rarely went to church between November and February. Even when I kept them with me in a sling, they were exposed to so much. And, yes, by #4 I was still concerned- maybe more so. At the point when one got sick, it meant four sick!
I agree. Stay home if you are unwell!
Thank you for sharing! I tend to take my kids to church if they don’t have a fever/aren’t throwing up. Mainly because I’m the nursery coordinator and if I’m not there it’s a giant hassle. On the flip side I try VERY HARD to clean every single toy after church each week. It’s not perfect but… I do appreciate when moms don’t bring their sick kids but for me- I have to be there even when website coughy/runny/sneezy. I hope you’ve linked with 100 Happy Days! http://www.akreativewhim.com/100-happy-days-14
Wise advice! And nowadays with so many churches offering podcasts or other forms of broadcasting, you can easily hear the sermon later on and not expose others to the creeping crud.