Finally, the Concert

As I often point out, I don't watch football games nor pay much attention to what the Packers do.  I knew there was a game today and that was it.  When I arranged our Advent concert, I checked the Packer schedule and called all the churches in town to make sure there were no conflicts and there weren't. The Packers played at noon which gave them plenty of time before they finished up.  It seemed we had picked the best night possible.

I wrote the press releases, made sure we were on every community calendar on local websites, newspapers and radio and television stations.  The posters were up all over town.

Then this morning in church, I found out the worst had happened.  The National Football League had changed the time of the football game from noon to 3:30.  The game would still be going on when our concert began.  We lost a tenor who of course went to the game.

When the Sunday school demanded use of our practice space, I'm afraid I blew up with a mighty hissy fit. We had not had the use of the church for two weeks and we had a concert tonight. Once again, the choir was forced to practice in the choir room. I announced this was my last concert and my last year as choir director.  (In fact, that is true.  I am ready to move on and had decided that a week ago.)

I came home with rising blood pressure, angry that what I had been working on for months was falling apart. Gary fed me lunch, took me for a walk, and then told me to take a nap.   I did and felt much better.  By 4:30 I was back at church rehearsing and running people through parts.  I worked out where my people would sit, talked several people into singing with us.

In the end, we pulled off the concert.  We had a nice mix of vocals and instrumentals with singers from the youngest Sunday school kid to the old timers in the choir.  We had a superb flautist,  pianists and some moving solos.  Our twenty voice choir rocked the place, especially on "Holy is the Newborn Child".

We didn't have much of an audience but the people who came enjoyed the concert and stayed for the reception.   But it was my last concert as choir director.  A relief.