My night on the town

My husband treated me to an early Christmas present last night. He bought us floor tickets to the Jars of Clay/Third Day Christmas tour at the city near us. We got ready to go and tried to be as stylish as we could be. I even chose my healed shoes versus my pratical, very comfortable shoes. We had a new babysitter so we left the house later than anticipated and I underestimated the amount of time that it would take to get there. And so at 7:30, the start time of the concert, we were driving around the arena looking for a parking space. Finally we settled on one outside of a bar (I'll spare you the name of the bar) and started making our way on the snow slick sidewalk to the concert. It was at this moment that I was seriously reconsidering my decision to look stylish--especially considering my bum toe (see my previous post). We were comforting ourselves by trying to convince ourselves that the concert wasn't going to start on time. However, as we entered the area doors, handed the doorman our tickets, and our pants started to vibrate because of the bass music we realized that the concert had indeed begun. So we made our way to our seats; I'm sure we annoyed everyone else in row fourteen as we stumbled over them trying to be graceful as we carried our soft pretzels and drinks. (My husband likes to do it right on a big date :) ) I settled into my seat and was enjoying the opening act--Jars of Clay--who could have headlined a show if they were with any other Christian band besides Third Day. I looked at Joe--his face clearly showed the sacrifice he was making on his wife's behalf. He leaned over and yelled in my ear--"My pants are still vibrating and the lady next to me is filling up half my chair." I am somewhat more of a rocker than my husband. But, even I after about 10 minutes, was feeling rather old. I kept thinking about the fact that the next day I was going to be spending 4 hours with elementary kids practicing a Christmas play and then I was going to have to clean my house for a small group party that we were going to host. On top of all that, I kept sneezing and was become more and more convinced that I was coming down with yet another cold. So, had we really made the best decision? It was seeming anticlimatic. Their final song was somewhat inspiring and I was feeling a little more encouraged--at least my feet had stopped hurting from running all the way from the truck for about 5 blocks. We finished our snack during intermission and then enjoyed sometime chatting. I took an opportunity to look around a little and realized that I wasn't as old as I thought I was--pretty much everyone else in our area of the arena was my age. At least that was encouraging. And then Third Day came out and I have to say--IT WAS SOOOOO WORTH IT!!!!! Even now as I sit here completely sleep deprived (we didn't get home until midnight), with a new cold, a completely dirty house that will be full of guests this evening, and facing 4 hours with singing elementary kids--it was still so worth it. I'm not really sure what my favorite part was--the highlights were Born in Bethlehem (Joe's favorite), Show me Your Glory (my favorite), the fact that they mixed in their classic worship songs in with their Christmas music, they had all the words projected on the screen so everyone could sing along, and all of this done by the very, very talented Mac Powell and his band. It was by far the best concert either Joe or I had been too. And, even Joe who remember is not really my rocker husband, wants to sign up for their fan club just so he can relive the concert. (You can watch it online if you join.) He even gave me permission to buy whatever tickets I wanted to get the next time they come into town. And so, thank you, my dear husband for giving me a very, very good Christmas present.