The ADD Girl Goes to Confession

 I went to Confession this week after a solid month of trying. It’s hard for a girl with seven kids and ADD. A friend of mine doesn’t believe me, so I wrote down the last week’s Confession-related activities. This is why I never quite get there:

• Recognize that I’m not in fact perfect and that I really do need to go to Confession.
• Go make lunch for the kids and forget all about Confession.
• Two days later – Sunday – remember while I’m in the Communion line that I needed to go to Confession
• Cross arms across chest and take the blessing instead
• Spend the ride home from Mass listening to the 6-year-old talk about how big he is because he got a blessing instead of the Eucharist “just like mom.”
• Explain to the kids the concept of being in a state of sin and receiving the Eucharist unworthily. Try to sound like I’m cool with it.
• Totally not cool with it.
• Resolve to look up Confession times at local churches and get there before next Sunday.
• Look for bulletin I grabbed after Mass because there are bound to be times listed on that thing. 
• Realize I dropped it at some point between leaving my pew and walking in the front door of my house.
• Darn it.
• Feed kids post-Mass donuts and grab iPad to start looking at local churches.
• Get distracted by icon of Candy Crush on my wall.
• Lose five rounds in a row.
• Put dinner in the crockpot and go read a book.
• Blissfully unaware of the state of my soul.

Skip ahead to Friday.

• What? How is it Friday already? I needed to go to Confession!
• Google local parishes and shake my head at the deplorable lack of convenient Confession times.
• There’s one on Saturday at 2:30-3:00. Resolve to go then.
• Begin examination of Conscience.
• Decide to write it down because I forget stuff.
• Go in search of paper and a pencil.
• Play Candy Land with the 4-year-old
• Vacuum the front room.
• Chat with my friend K on the phone.
• Text a picture of the baby to my mother in law.
• Remember I needed paper and pencil for something.
• Try to remember what.
• Oh. Right. Confession.
• Draw a blank on where to begin
• Grab iPad and google “Examination of Conscience”
• Look at half a dozen before I find one that I like (doesn’t annoy me). Start reading.
• Get intrigued by picture of saint in the sidebar. Who is that anyway?
• Click on it.
• Oh. St Dymphna. I’ve never seen that picture of her before. Isn’t she head injuries?
• Google it.
• Nope. That’s St John Riccio. Dymphna is migraines, I think.
• Forget why I was on the computer and go to do something useful like clean the boys’ bathroom.
• Make joke to eldest son about how cleaning his bathroom is penitential.
• Penitential makes me think of Confession.
• Darn.
• Grab iPad and start trying to re-find that Examination of Conscience that I liked.
• Can’t find it. Where did it go?
• Settle for the one with the annoying background music and the angels with moving wings.
• Get too distracted by the moving wings.
• Look for another site.
• Find one at last and hole up in my room to make a list of everything I’ve done wrong.
• Am found by the children who ask to be fed.
• Wonder why I have to feed them every single day.
• Yell at kids for interrupting me.
• Add “yell at kids” to the list
• Go make lunch
• Remember to go back to my list.
• Yay me!
• Start to cry when I realize how much I suck.
• Laugh when I realize I’ll probably forget how much I suck by tomorrow.
• Add “laugh at being sinful” to the list. It’s probably not one, but at this point I’m not taking chances.
• Go pee.
• List is discovered by 9-year-old who asks “What’s this?”
• Disavow all knowledge of that list that obviously belongs to some lying gossiping person which could never be me.
• Start a new list with “lied to the 9-year-old”
• Darn.
• Realize it’s 4:00 pm and I’ve missed it.
• Double darn
• Finish list and put it in my purse because Surprise! there’s Confession right before the Mass we attend on Sunday mornings.
• Do a happy dance and wonder why I didn’t know that before now
• Go to the grocery store and am unable to find my discount card because of all the paper in my purse.Get frustrated and throw them all away.
• Yup, the EoC too
• Cuss when I get home and realize that I threw it away in the grocery store trash can
• Briefly consider going back to fish it out.
• Decide to start over.
• Again.
• Wonder if there’s an app for that…because I think I once heard an interview by some guys who made an app for Confession.
• Can’t find it on my phone.
• Wonder if I’m hallucinating.
• Make mental note that a Confession app would seriously rock.
• Find the app I was thinking of.
• It’s only on Apple and I have a Windows phone.
• Darn.
• Attempt to recreate list from memory beginning with “Cussed when I lost my Examination of Conscience list.”
• Make a copy of the list.
• Place one in my purse and the other in the car.
• Congratulate myself on my forethought.
• Go to bed because it’s Saturday night by now and Confession is at 7:30 in the morning (Mass at 8)
• Wake up later than I had planned and get dressed faster than humanly possible.
• Thank whomever it is that’s slowing down time for me this morning.
• Switch wallet to my brown purse because I changed my mind about what to wear.
• Decide to ride to Mass with the eldest child (she sings in the choir and has to be there early) instead of driving myself so that she can take her new (to her) car.
• Yell good-bye to the other kids (who are already dressed) and the Computer Guy (who isn’t yet) and tell them I’ll meet them at the church.
• #4 decides to join us because she needs to go to Confession too
• Congratulate myself on raising kids who realize they need to go to Confession
• Wonder if that’s a pride thing?
• Decide it won’t hurt to add. The list isn’t too long, but I’m a fast reader
• Realize that I don’t have either list.
• Try to call my husband and ask him to bring it, but then remember my phone is charging at home
• Fish a Wal-Mart receipt out of my wallet and start furiously scribbling my list because I know there’s no way I’ll remember it all once I get nervous.
• The pen stops working halfway down the list and I write it in indentation after that.
• Wonder if God gives points for effort
• Decide that writing with a dried up pen isn’t really effort.
• Darn.
• Finally get to church and get in the line for the Confessional
• Think to myself how pleasantly surprised I am that there’s a line at 7:30 am
• Stake out a place in the pews for my family with my purse and then go stand behind #4
• She’s really fast.
• Enter the Confessional and kneel down only to realize that my list is in my purse in the pew.
• Darn it.
• Start from memory.
• Repeat myself three times.
• Forget what I was going to say.
• Apologize twice for forgetting the list.
• Get my Penance and leave the Confessional
• Remember the big one that was the reason I needed to go in the first place.
• Get back to the pew and fish out my receipt.
• Circle “the big one” with the indent making pen 
• Write down “Confession next week”
• Promise myself I’m going to remember it this time.