Relearning a Hard Lesson About Chronic Pain

Hubby and I had accepted an invitation for the christening of his cousin's baby yesterday. The invitation was for the event and a reception after. Since neither of us had ever attended one of these, we really didn't know what to expect. I grew up in a church where baptism was something that only happened when a person was of an age that they could decide on their own that they wanted it. Without any first hand experience assumptions were made based entirely on movies and TV shows, cause that's always real, right?

The biggest assumption made was that a christening would be its own event. I thought all the family and friends would show up at the church to watch the parents and god-parents gather round the baby. The pastor would pour water on the babies head, pray and we would be out of there is 20 minutes - max. This could not have been further from reality and, if I hadn't been so attached to the Hollywood image of a christening, I would have figured out that a church event taking place at 11am on a Sunday was an event that was part of a church service and not a stand alone event. I simply was not thinking.

Upon arrival at the church we were shocked to see that:
A. We were about to attend a church service
B. We would have to sit in the 2nd row which had been reserved for those of us attending the christening
C. That it was a contemporary church with a full band

As you can imagine, these are all things I really needed to know in advance in order to properly prepare and avoid severe pain. If I had known the time commitment involved I would have brought water. Had I known they were going to have a band playing for a full 30 minutes and that the band was going to be unnecessarily amplified in the small room I would have explained to my cousin-in-law that I can't handle that level of noise and let her known that I would watch the christening from the back of the church and sneak out after - meeting up with them later for the reception. Had I known that the ridiculously loud music would be followed by a half hour of the pastor, who was also well amplified, unnecessarily yelling his sermon, I would have walked out during the music portion (again, we were in the 2nd row and I just couldn't bring myself to stand up and walk out in the middle of his sermon). This was like no church I had ever attended.

When the pastor had finally finished and I saw the band take their places on stage we just left. I wasn't about to sit through one more minute of that crazy loud music. I get that I'm sensitive to noise and that it was painful for me in a way it wasn't for everyone else there. That being said, there is no reason to amplify a live band in a room as small as that sanctuary was. It was loud to the point that it was damaging to the ear drums. Why would they do that? I'm getting off track here...

The actual christening and the reception were lovely but the whole thing was a disaster for me. We left the reception early, thankfully hubby had another commitment, but the damage had been done 10 minutes into the service. By the time we got home I was well on my way to a bad migraine. An hour later I was lost in pain. I blame myself. I should have known better and I should have asked questions. I'm simply not in a position to go with the flow anymore. If only I had been thinking.