It was about half ten when Shai and i sheepishly appeared at Anne's door, a bit tardy for another day full of adventure. I will own up and admit that it was my fault we were late. but mom was chatting with my while i ate breakfast, so thats why. (good excuse huh?)
Today we decided to try a second attempt at spending a day at the park and were successful. :) the parks here in England are absolutly fantastic.
its exciting.
the weather was perfect for a day at the park, and the sky so perfectly clear i was sorely tempted to go buy a towel and spend hours staring at it. to bad the grass was muddy. probably wouldn't have been a great idea though, considering how Shaina and i are fairly sunburnt as it is. our newest shainaism (that actually orginates from sam) would be "its funny how we grew up in thailand, and then came to london and got a sunburn." :P i'll try to get a good picture of our red faces up soon. but back to our park excersion...
Shaina and i absolutly loved all the little kids yelling at each other with their adorable accents, and managed to video some of them while help Ari balance on a tightropeish thing.
at one point a little boy named George climbed quite high, and i could tell his grandmother was rather nervous (because she kept calling out to him saying: "um, george, don't you think it would be a good idea to come down now?", so i quickly went to his aid. he didn't really need my help though, and managed to get himself down rather impressively. then i made the mistake of congratulating him and saying "great job george!" to which he responded "how do you know my name." Shaina and i were laughing to hard to answer, and the poor little boy didn't play near us again. oh wellz.
Once Ari had successfully walked the tightrope back and forth several times, we let another young girl give it a go, and headed for another roped structure. Our new game was to let Ari gingerly make her way from one side and sit down in the middle. After she was seated, she would pick a side for Shaina to sit on, and once she was seated, i'd make my way to the other. Then the whole system would be repeated. This is where today's quote comes in. :)
the first time i was supposed to cross over and sit down, i sarcasticly remarked to shai about how "difficult" this process was going to be. dear Ari heard me and immediantly turn to shaina asking if she would be willing to to help me out if i needed it. when shaina told her that she would be willing to assist me in anyway, ari turned to me and gravely explained that all i needed to do was to trust shai, who had walked the way before me. slightly embrassed by the whole conversation, i thanked shaina profusly and quickly made my way over to sit down.
however, as we continued on with our "game", i began to look into deeper implications of what had just happened. forgive me for philosophical or whatever for a bit, and bear with me. cause in my humble opinion, i actually had some pretty cool thoughts in those couple of mintues. :P
i began to imaine our lives as those roped in areas, and the ropes themselves as the individual struggles we come across. we are the little kids, looking hopelessly at the tangled masses, trying to make heads or tails of it all and to move on, and God is kinda like the big babysitter (i don't mean to be in anyway disrespectful by comparing Him to that at the moment) that we need to learn to trust.
it was fun, standing there and listening to Ari shriek as she clung tightly to the ropes, surrounded by two very capable babysitters with blonde curly hair, knowing that although to her the challenges looked huge, we could easily handle any problems she got herself into.
i wondered if God often feels that way. He is there, right next to us as we squeal in horror at the tangled mass of ropes in front of us and it tempted to laugh because He knows who He is, and to say it plainly - from His point of view our struggles don't look all that hard. But just as i loved (and still love) Ari to much to laugh at her confusion or temporary moments of panic, and chose to patiently stand by her, He supresses a grin and reminds us during our darkest moments that He - like Shaina in the earlier part of our story - has walked the path before us, and will assisst us. We simply need to learn to trust in Him.... to follow His footsteps.
Isn't that kinda beautiful? slightly unreverent, i'll admit, but still. i love the thought of God seeing so much more than what we see, and loving us even when we forget that He is sooo much bigger than the issues we face. and He really is. while we see splinterly red ropes, He is gazing at a beautiful park with a lovely sky. well, maybe not. but i was.
anyhow.
we had a picnic at the park with the entire Glazier family and two friends, one of them an adorable boy named Jack who found great joy in chasing pigeons and eating the bread we gave him for feeding the ducks. the ducks were pretty aggressive, and reminded Shai and i about an experince we had (or, our brother had) while feeding deer several years back, but thats another story.
we then took a walk in the park, stopped for ice cream, and basically chased Ari and Jack around while snapping photos and laughing at all of Sam's great comments. good times.
It was midafternoon when we got back to Annes. first we washed off our muddy feet. then we watched more game shows. the pointless jackpot was almost given away, guys. and argentina has a lot of silver... or is it gold? :PP
we spent the rest of the evening at a youth event with sam, the two girls from our host family, and about 20 other teenagers. that was fun. shaina, lucy, my new favorite sam, and i made up the champion team for the connect four game. pretty sure we won a few other games too. maybe. defintely lost the strawberry lace game though. sam's team won that one. glad he won something.
one little boy looked like edmund from the Narnia, so i got a picture with him. afiterwards he was grinning really big and telling his friends "i'm famous!" pretty sure i made his day. :)
Lucy, Sam, Shai and i had a great time drinking tea, eating sweets, and catching up on life for the next hour or so. and now i'm left alone in the kitchen, typing away to my heart's content. hopefully you've enjoyed the post and i didn't make to many typos this time. God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment