Lessons from the desert...

    I had two blogs going through my mind while I was in Israel but with everything going on, I knew I would need to wait until a quiet Arkansas morning to write them.  Now as I listen to the thunder and the steady rain outside, this seems like the perfect time to write about the second thing that was on my heart as we traveled.
     On our last Wed, we went on a bus tour to the South, headed for the Dead Sea and Masada.  We traveled through the West Bank to get to Jerusalem where we picked up some more passengers for the tour bus.  Traveling through the West Bank was fascinating to me even though we didn't come close to any villages.  I remember seeing the sign pointing to Jericho but that was about as close as we came.  As our guide explained to us, Jerusalem was the modern GPS focal point for the ancient traveler.  Follow the River Jordan until you come to Jerusalem and then you know to turn.. that type of thing.
    After our brief stop in Jerusalem, we headed out of the city, going through a  tunnel.  When we came out of the tunnel, the landscape was radically changed.  Jerusalem is truly a city set on a hill and it has lush greenery in places.  After we descended via the tunnel for what seemed like 5 or 10 minutes max, we came out into a barren, totally brown, rocky landscape. The contrast was stunning. I don't think anything on our trip impacted me like this did.
    Our guide explained that as clouds move over Jerusalem, they are forced to drop their moisture on the city and once they travel past Jerusalem, there is no more moisture for the downward side of the city or indeed for miles and miles to come.
    Just like that, we were in what the Bible calls the Judean Wilderness and what modern Israeli's call the Judean Desert.    As we drove through this barren area, the guide explained that this is where John the Baptist preached.   How anyone could even live in that area, I wouldn't know - obviously he had to be close to the River Jordan to survive. And of course it was there where John baptized Christ. It was also here where Christ faced His time of temptation.
    Today there are Bedouins who live in this area - we saw some along the way.  Their whole lives are based around a search for water yet this is traditionally how they have lived for centuries, this is their heritage.  Two things struck me in this area. First was the scarcity of water.  Even in Tel Aviv, citizens have a monthly limit on how much water they can use. If they go over, they pay a fine.  One morning it rained somewhere briefly in Israel and I heard people commenting on how it never rains in August ever, like this was a miracle.  So you can imagine how precious water is in the wilderness.   I understood why the patriarch Isaac had trouble digging wells and hanging on to them.  Ownership of a well in ancient times would have been a serious matter.  And I understood why Jesus spoke of living water that He came to bring to the people, water that would well up from within and would quench thirst forever.  He was speaking of spiritual water, eternal life-giving water. But the imagery would have been a powerful one in that land where you don't just go to a tap and turn on water without giving it a second thought.
    The second thing that caught my imagination were the rocks. For the first time I understood why the Psalmist often referred to God as a rock.  I realized that although we have large rocks in Arkansas, especially at the end of the grassy aisles on the Wal Mart parking lots :), for the most part - to me a rock is something that you hold in your hand or skip across the surface of the water or bend over to dig out of your shoe.

     The Judean desert was miles of rocks, hundreds and hundreds of brown boulders interspersed with brown rocks of every size and shape.   I understood for the first time what the Psalmist was saying.  The rocks I saw would not be easily moved by puny man and neither is the God that David knew.  If our will coincides with His will, He will hear us and grant our request. If our will doesn't coincide with His, our manipulations, our strength, and our wisdom will not dislodge Him from His purpose, His will for us.  A huge rock is immovable and our God is a huge Rock. .
   I also saw that to hide behind one of these massive boulders would basically mean that an enemy would have to go through the rock to get to the one behind it. And this is something that a mere man could not do.  There is a hymn that says He hideth my soul in the cleft of a rock.   I understood that the Rock is Jesus and that if God hides us in His Son, Yeshua, then our enemies have to go through this Rock to get to us.  I also understood that we can take ourselves out of the cleft of the Rock through the sins of worry, fear, anger, unforgiveness, self-pity. And when we step out of the cleft of our Rock, then the enemy has open-season on us because we have moved away from our immovable shelter.
    The Bible says over and over that Jerusalem is special to God. It was in Ancient times and it will be in future times.  Why He established His holy city in the midst of a tiny, very dry, rather difficult land, I don't know.   Why His city is set at a high elevation and is capable of producing greenery and then it  immediately falls off into a desert which produces nothing but rocks, I don't know.  And why this city has been a bone of contention between three religions for centuries, I also don't know.
   But I finally understand that my God is a Rock and this is no small thing.  And also, as the song says, He is a river in a barren land, which is also not a small thing.









 This is not the best shot of what we saw - neither of us had our cameras ready when we came upon the desert. But maybe it gives some idea of the landscape.

    Israel is different and you know you're not in the South (of the U.S., that is) almost as soon as you land. Here you can smile at people on the street and you'll often get a smile in response.  I didn't find that to be true there - people seemed busy, confident, determined, focused.  I didn't hear the words "please", "thank-you", and "excuse me" hardly at all in public and I came to feel awkward for saying those words so much myself.
   I came to realize that this is the deal: life is tough in this little country (smaller than Arkansas) and it's hard to smile at strangers when you're wondering if the person passing you is a potential bomber.  I realized that people weren't just unwilling to return smiles from strangers, some of them were actually scrutinizing strangers, something we do in the "bad" part of town, something they do in any part of town.
   Three experiences from this trip brought this home for me.
   First the trip to Yad VAshem, the Holocaust Museum.  On the way there, our host stopped at a military cemetery and showed us the grave of his father who died in the 1948 War when he was just a young man with a wife and a baby.  I realized our host never had the chance to know his father.  Then we stopped at the graves of some famous people such as Yitzak Rabin and Golda Meir, years apart in their times of service but dealing with the same issue - how to protect Israel and find peace that seems to be ever elusive...
   Then we went to Yad Vashem where no one is allowed to take pictures.  About a fourth of the way through, I was crying and the thought went through my mind:  maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is no God after all.  Almost as soon as that thought went through my mind, I was enveloped by a sense of His nearness and I knew that He does exist.    (It wasn't until later that I realized it was actually Sunday - my sense of time was so messed up the whole time I was in Israel - and that when I felt His presence, it was time for Sunday School to start back home. Amazing.  6,000 miles from home. Prayer works... ).   At any rate, Yad Vashem is well-done and very moving, tough to walk through. But it was something I had to do and I think everyone who goes to Israel should walk through this memorial alongside generations of Israelis for whom this is a record of their own personal history, their own family members. As we would say over here - it is personal - very much so...One live image stands out for me in particular. A young, attractive Israeli woman who was obviously pregnant, holding the small hand of a pre-schooler. Tears were silently running down her face while her child looked around with total innocence.

   The second experience was standing on top of Masada.  A group of Jewish families - over 900 in number - had held out against the Ancient Romans for several years.  The Romans were determined to get this group because the more slaves they marched into Rome, the bigger the press they received.  As the Romans finally built a rampart to the top of Masada, the Jews could have dropped boulders, boiling oil, etc on the slave workers but they didn't.  Because the slaves were Jewish, their relatives.  Instead they weighed their options: surrender to the Romans or commit suicide.  Jewish law forbids suicide so when they opted for the second choice, they did it this way:  each man would kill his own wife and children.  Then ten men would be chosen to go around and kill the fathers/husbands.  Finally, one of the ten would kill the last nine men remaining and then that tenth man would commit suicide.  Today, Israeli combat soldiers finish their training by marching across about 60 miles of full-blown desert to Masada. They climb to the top where they have their graduation ceremony which includes shouting out the motto: Never Again!  Once this is done, they earn the right to wear the beret of the combat soldier.
    The third experience happened on our last night in Israel.  IN the late afternoon the family huddled around the television watching coverage of 4 terrorist attacks in Eilat, a Southern town that is used for vacations during the month of August and also has summer camps for children.  When supper was ready we sat down to eat and shortly after the meal started, we heard the thunderous sound of a military helicopter taking off nearby.  David and  I were the only ones who were startled.  Our host must have seen the confusion on our faces because he responded laconically, "They hit us. We hit them back."  Then we heard planes flying overhead, obviously not close to us and obviously headed South.  The thing that amazed me was that the mom could tell what type of planes they were simply by the sound of the engines.  That one is a bomber....  That one is a cargo plane - you know, they carry vehicles...  Oh.. this is bad.. .that one sounds like a troop transport... After 30 minutes, the planes were still coming and she was worried.  This is big.. usually they don't fly over for this long.  I am very worried.   When they were still flying over head an hour later, she told me, I am so afraid this means we are going in on the ground.  They have been flying for such a long time, this is not typical.  Then as she stood at the kitchen sink looking down,  she said, "All we want is peace. When I was young, I believed that soon we would have it. Now I know we never will."
    As it turned out, a fellow traveler, an Israeli mom, explained to me on the plane trip back to N.J. that her son was in the military and he was supposed to come home on Thursday.  But after the terrorist attacks, they canceled his leave and he was one of the ones flying South, probably over the very flat where I was having supper.  She said that the border with Gaza was so unstable that the Israeli army decided to put a lot of soldiers along the border n order to make a strong showing and prevent further attacks. So they weren't just going after the terrorists but they were beefing up the border patrol as well. Thankfully, they weren't going in for a ground war.
  I have been told that the  native Israeli is called a Sabra after the cactus that grows in this little country - it (and they) are prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside. I found that to be true (about the people, not the cactus:).  The bottom line is that this is not the land of Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara.  It's a land where people live, love and work never knowing when the next terrorist attack will come or when the next war will break out.  They know it's coming, they just don't know when.  (By the way, we flew out Friday morning and over the weekend more than a hundred rockets were fired into Israel and one suicide bomber blew himself up in Jerusalem, city of peace).
   Under the circumstances, I understand why people walking down the sidewalks are all business and there are few smiles.  If you get home safely, then you can smile...
 
   
   

Finger Pokers and grace...

     1.   From the Max Lucado Devotional Bible - Max shared a story about a comedy routine in which two men are talking.  One man is telling the other how much he hates a third guy. Because whenever the third guy talks to him, he repeatedly pokes his finger in his chest, hitting him in the same place.  But now the aggrieved man has a plan!  He confides to his buddy that he's going to prevent the finger-poker from ever hitting him in the chest again! With pride, he shows the man a small bottle attached to a strap which hangs around his neck. The bottle fits under his shirt and hangs in front of the very spot where the aggravating person likes to poke him with his finger.  The bottle contains liquid nitroglycerin... Sooooo... the next time this finger-poker comes around....
          This story made me laugh... Until I realized I'd sort of been there, done that!


    2.  Thoughts sparked by David Platt's book, Radical.   Platt asks the question - why did Christ shrink back from the Cross?  He mentions other martyrs who went to their deaths confident, even singing praises. And then he asks this question:  did Christ beg to forgo the cross  because He was a coward?? I had to admit, there have been times when I've wondered, after reading about men like John Bunyan or Pastor Wurmbrand, how it could be true that hanging on a cross for a few hours was the worst suffering possible.  Even from history, I know that hundreds if not thousands were executed on crosses in Ancient Rome. (Some have been executed on crosses in modern times as well). Yet all my life I've heard that Christ endured more suffering than any other person when he died on the cross. And at times, it just didn't make sense to me how a few hours on a cross could be as bad as being chained in a dungeon for years on end or being tortured in solitary confinement over and over again.
         Years ago, our church invited people to fast for three days in January. This could be a food fast or a fast from something like television or whatever. The idea was that we would give up something that is time-consuming (and perhaps anesthetizing like comfort food) in order to seek God's will for our church for the coming year. Having worked with internationals who were Christians, I knew that they all scoffed at the idea of a fast involving turning off the television.  Every international friend said that in their country a fast  always meant abstinence from food.
       The first year we were invited to do the three-day fast, I made it til about 3p.m. of the second day.  And that was with some  fluids - water, juice.  The second year, I didn't make it longer than 24 hours.  The idea was that we would meet at church on Sunday morning of the third day and then return that evening to break our fast together as a church body.  I remember that after failing for the second time, I drove home from church that morning feeling pretty low.  Not because of what anyone had said to me - I didn't try to act like I had fasted and everyone was nice to me.  But because the whole week had been characterized by one sin after another.  It was one of those weeks where if I felt God was telling me to sit, for some reason, I would stand. Like I could read a verse about watching what I said and then I could go right out and maliciously rip someone apart verbally. That type of week - no big victories; lots of defeat.  And this was at a time when God was blessing us in tangible ways.
      And then here I was, going home from church having failed to fast when I knew others in the sanctuary were bound to have succeeded. On the way, I stopped at a Christian retreat area, The Oasis, and walked along a hiking trail until I came to a small hill where a plain cross was mounted at the top.  Back then, that was my favorite place to pray.  As I knelt there, I thought of how God had gone out of His way to visibly bless us in recent days  and how I had responded by having  an in-Your-face attitude culminating in the 3-day fast which had morphed into one... and I just cried out, "God!  You should be angry with me!!! You have every right to just let me have it!!!"
     And to my surprise, the answer came:  I was angry with you.  I did pour out my wrath on you... But Jesus stepped in front of you and took it in your place - I poured it all on Him.
     Who am I? Well, really, I'm the guy who could hang a bottle of nitroglycerin around his neck in order to "pay back" someone who has hurt me.  A bit short-sighted, shall we say?  A nice person who can carry a grudge?  A person who loves chocolate more than God?  How about a person who can read uplifting thoughts in the Bible and then go out and be petty?
     Who is God?  He is the just One who can't even look on sin.  He is the loving One who sent His Son, His only Son, to take it on the cross for me.  And for all the others who have ever lived and  wallowed in sin ranging  from ax murders to "decent sinners', as Corrie ten Boom would say.
     And that's why hanging on the cross was the worst suffering anyone has ever endured and that is why Jesus asked God to release Him from this cup if at all possible.
    ANd I would have to add:   Jesus not only took my punishment - which is amazing in and of itself, but He also lovingly comes to me and says tenderly, "My Sweet One, let's see now... How about if I just gently remove that little bottle from around your neck?  Why don't you let me take care of the Finger-Poker?  There... doesn't that feel better already?"
    Colossians 2:13 -   And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses.  He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us  and opposed to us, and has taken it to the cross. (I think the NIV says it was nailed to the cross...so thankful!!)

When you need a hand...

    This post is probably weird but what else is new?
    I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be married and have children.  Yep... I was one of those kids who  had tons of dolls scattered around my room and every one had a name, all my "babies" were equally important to me.  (At night, it was really tough because I didn't want any of them to have to sleep by themselves so my twin-size bed got a bit crowded...:)
   Long after the doll stage, when I was 17, I read something in the Bible Study Fellowship notes on Genesis that caught my attention. The lesson was about finding a wife for Isaac and the main point was that the servant who had to find this girl  didn't just go busting ahead in his own wisdom and strength but instead prayed first.
   Bottom line:  Eleazar prayed, asked for a specific sign,  and immediately Rebekkah showed up - the rest being (literally) history.
   In this particular BSF lesson, Miss Johnson asked if we had ever knelt and petitioned God in faith for something.  I really hadn't.  So I knelt where I was and asked God if He would someday let me have the gift of marriage.
   In BSF, we had learned to watch for several things when seeking God's guidance:  Scriptural confirmation, a deep, God-given sense of peace, and also for  circumstances to line up.  As I made my request, I realized that it might be a while before Mr. Right came along so  I asked God  to confirm His will ahead of time.  Basically, I asked Him to give me a deep peace if it was His plan for me to be married some day. No change in my current emotional status would mean that it wasn't. Before I even finished my request, I was totally flooded with peace - something that I knew was from Him and not from me.
   Having gotten the green light, so to speak, I added my plan - which was to be married within a few years - certainly by the time I finished college:) However  the years started flying by and as they did, many of my friends married while I - I became an expert at serving wedding cake and punch :(  Frankly, it wasn't easy. Each time another friend married, I struggled with feelings of loneliness, of having missed life somehow, and also with envy. And I doubted whether I had heard God correctly back when I was 17.
   As I approached thirty, yet another close friend was getting married and I knew it would be a challenge for me emotionally. So as soon as I knew she was engaged,  I started asking God to help me -  to keep my attitude joyful for my friend's sake and to protect me from feelings of depression.  And He did it! Even during the ceremony itself, I was fine.
  However, driving  back home afterwards, alone in the dark, I began to struggle.  As I was going down University Avenue the words to the song, "He's the Hand on My Shoulder" caught my attention. I listened to the lyrics and then simply asked God if He would be  the hand on my shoulder - telling Him that I needed  a tangible sense of His nearness.  And that's when it happened - I felt a slight, momentary pressure on my shoulder and a deep comfort to go with it. The sense of comfort was quickly followed by incredulity.   I had asked -  but I hadn't really expected!  I was so shocked that I even looked over my shoulder in case someone was in the back seat!  Yet even as I looked I knew that if it had been a person, I would have been scared (to put it mildly!!), not uplifted.
    Simply put, He gave  what I asked for and more..
    And, needless to say,  that song has been special to me ever since.
    Now, as Phil and I approach our 25th anniversary in Nov. (God keeps His promises!!!!), we can testify that  His hand has never left us even through the dark days and difficult times of life -He is the hand on our shoulder.. Not literally unless.... you really need it.  Then, He really can do it!

Burundi, cheeseburgers, and ... chumps...:)

         Okay.  My feet are definitely made of clay and my mouth is usually better closed as opposed to open.  I've been reading a little about a traumatized African country, one that used to be joined with Rwanda and like Rwanda, has also experienced tribal genocide.  The name of the place is Burundi and it's history is no less shocking than Rwanda's or the Sudan's.
         I read a little bit this morning about their extreme poverty, tension and violence  back in the 1990's and then I put the book down in order to  go swimming. (Think  Western dichotomy here..). While I'm exercising in the water, a personal grievance enters my mind and before long, my brain is stewing over  this past event, Burundi's problems having taken  a back seat to mine...  After the water aerobics stuff, I head to Sonic and choose at least two items that are relatively low calorie. (The third item we won't discuss.:.)
        After repeating my order three times distinctly  enough and loudly  enough  to have been heard in Burundi  and after also mentioning twice that I had a 2.00 off coupon, the girl gave me my total. I quickly realized it was not discounted. So I called back, talked to someone else and they recalculated my total to include the coupon.
       When the girl came out, she announced that I had a cheese burger.  I told her that I hadn't ordered a cheeseburger.  She looked pretty intelligent but for some reason, she just kept standing there saying flatly, "So.. you don't want this..." I kept telling her that I didn't and she just kept stonewalling.
        I've had problems at this Sonic before but everyone has always been nice about it, quick to try to fix it, etc.  So it hasn't bothered me.
       This time, however, I got ticked.  The only thing that helped me remain calm on the outside was something one of our pastors said a week ago Sunday:  if you've ever been hateful to a casual acquaintance or someone you just met out in public, don't go back and try to witness to them. Just don't even go there...
      And it would be just my luck to go off on the girl and then the next time I see her, it's at church... So I let the pastor's words run through my mind while I deliberately kept my voice firm but calm.  She wouldn't budge, however, and just kept asking me in a flat voice if I didn't want the burger. I'm guessing the manager would have made her pay for the cheese burger had she taken it back.  So again, thinking about the pastor's words and how young she was, I told her I'd take the cheese burger.  (And I bit my tongue to keep from adding colorful speculation on how long it would be before I ever went back to that particular Sonic...)
    And then I even gave her a tip, for which I got a smirk, a nonchalant "Okay", and a shrug.
    And now I'm sitting here wondering how I could even do that?  Like I'm leap-frogging from horrific suffering (starvation, etc) in Burundi to getting bent out of shape over poor service at Sonic and feeling self-righteously aggrieved because, um.. I had to eat a cheeseburger??? And the girl didn't like, fall all over my feet when I went ahead and tipped her in spite of her attitude??? Like I should have at least been kowtowed to  for that or something...!!
    I'd like to say that I'm having a bad day, don't feel good, etc. But I feel fine and my day started off well.
    Instead, I'd have to agree with Corrie ten Boom.  In Tramp for the Lord she wrote  Corrie ten Boom is lazy, selfish, and filled with ego.  But Jesus Christ in Corrie ten Boom is just the opposite of all these things.  (P. 108)
    Basically  when I mess up by being petty (or am keeping it okay on the outside while seething over something petty  on the inside), I'd like to think that's not the real me, that deep down inside I really am the image that I try to project - someone who has their priorities straight, who puts others first, etc. But the truth is that when you scratch the surface, Cathie Abernathy is also lazy, selfish, and filled with ego.
   The good news is that Jesus in me, when I let Him have the upper hand,  is just the opposite.
    And really, I think that's the good news for all of us.

Joy comes in the (early) morning..

     Something different.  Still not sure what caused it.
     I tried to go to sleep last night at a more normal hour -which right now would be midnight for me instead of say 1 or 2 a.m....=/  However, sleep would not come. In it's place, came something better.  As I lay there in the dark, I felt peace and joy - almost tangible joy - along with  praise welling up inside me.  I found myself praising God in what I always think of as "Nigerian Style" because that's how my Nigerian "daughter" always prayed - just different from Arkie home-grown prayers - trust me on this one.
     She would often start off thanking God for things like having gas in the car and food on the table with real, heartfelt thankfulness. She might go on to add  thanks for the fact that it was not our portion on this particular  day to wake up sick or in the hospital.  Then her prayers would increase in intensity as she would plead the blood of Christ over her friends and family who were in distress.  There was definitely none of the God is good, God is great... now I lay me down to sleep stuff in her prayers.  All of our friends loved to hear her pray and often as we were ending chill time together, we would pester her to pray out loud... in Nigerian! :) It was so strange but even when she prayed fervently in her own language - which was incomprehensible to us - we felt His presence so much more than we did when our own prayers wafted towards the ceiling in English.
      Last night, my prayers weren't as fervent as Yetty's but they were from the heart - actually, if I am allowed to say it - from outside my heart.  My petitions weren't whiny, fearful, or composed of incessant begging - the way a child nags at a parent until they get their way.  Please, Abba, please... would You... 
     I was so surprised by the peace and joy, confidence even that seemed to be welling up within me that I tried to figure out why it was happening.  This is what I came up with:
     1.  Someone was praying for me and that's how God answered them - by wrapping me in His love, giving me a respite from my normal fearful self. So if you prayed for me yesterday or last night - thank-you!  God definitely heard!
     2.  God used the thoughts planted by the Sullivan Four blog to re-direct my thoughts, as He has done in the past.  The blog talked about how God can transform worriers and how He actually did that for their daughter, Hannah.   I needed to hear that - went back and read it twice before going to sleep.
     3.  God had been working throughout the day to show me that He really is Sovereign, that He does all things well.  (All I can compare yesterday to is like spending hours upon hours toiling uphill, staring at the ground and at the little bit of trail that you can see snaking between the thorns and the brush and then.. suddenly.. you reach the top and you can look back and actually see that there was rhyme and reason to the path that you've been following).
    4.   At some point yesterday/last night, I took a small step towards reaching out in a particular way, something that fear has kept me from doing for a long time.  It occurred to me last night, as I lay there quietly rejoicing in His presence, that fear must cancel out  joy.
    5.  I have felt for the past few days that it wasn't the thing to go right into yet another thriller/adventure/espionage novel.  I don't think God has anything against them at all.  I just felt that He wanted me to stow the adrenalin-laced stuff briefly b/c He wanted my attention.  Thursday night, I went ahead and started a new novel anyway, sort of tipping my hat to God in the process, reading until my eyes were tired, and then falling into a fitful sleep. Last night I was going to pick up where I left off in the novel  but reluctantly decided not to. It's hard for me to believe that just laying aside a fun novel for one evening could lead to such a palpable sense of His nearness but maybe it could. I really don't know.
    Whatever the reason, I'm grateful.  As I lay there last night, feeling so close to Him, I thought: this must be what Heaven is like.  Only in Heaven you know it will never end -you'll always feel His nearness, His peace, His confidence, His joy and there'll never be that  nagging certainty that sooner or later the experience will  fade.
     Is He less real this morning because my mind is running on it's normal track?
     Definitely not.
     Would I like to experience His nearness like that more often?
    What do you think? :)
 

An impeccable outlook...

     I took a neighbor's child to Willow Springs this week. He's entering his last year of elementary school and to my surprise, was a delight to hang out with.
    When we got to the Water Park, he just looked at the water and quietly asked me  how deep it was.  Then he chose a picnic table, deposited his stuff and walked right into the pool, stopping only fractionally when the cool water first hit his feet and legs.  Once he was fully in the water  he cautiously headed out towards the middle, still matter-of-factly using me as a sounding board:  how deep is it here?   How deep is it going to be over there?  Now how deep do you think it is?   More than once, he solemnly informed me that he didn't want to drown but as long as he could stand on his tip-toes and bounce, he'd be okay.
   In between depth soundings, he chatted about his dog whom he obviously loves.  Later, after the dog topic wore out, I asked him if he had any brothers or sisters.  He  stared at me and then said  flatly, "Yes."  Nothing else.  Just "Yes."   So I hazarded a guess:  you like your dog better than your siblings?  
   He looked startled at my perspicuity and then threw back his head, laughing with sheer joy.  Somewhere in all the laughter was a resounding "Yes!":)
   It wasn't until we'd been in the pool for a while that he said, "When I saw this place, I thought: this is the biggest pool I'd ever seen!!  I was scared!!"    This was news to me: I knew he was concerned about the depth of the water obviously but I didn't realize this was the biggest body of water he'd ever been in .
   I told him that he hadn't shown fear and he quietly thanked me but added, "This pool is huge! I really was scared but I went in anyhow.  But still... I've never been in anything like this before!"
   At one point, I headed for the "shore" while he stayed in the water, near the slide.  By this time, he said he'd been outside so long the sun was turning his feet white...! I told him that was curious: the same sun was turning my nose red!
   Later, while he voluntarily guarded our things, I left the park to get a burger order for us but the girl who waited on me was in-training and although we went over the order three times, things still got a little garbled.  I finally took what I hoped were two cheese burgers back to the water park and set the sack on the picnic table. My new friend dug into the first cheese burger and when I told him it was supposed to have ketchup on it, he quit eating long enough to examine the inside of the bun. "Nope!  It doesn't have any. But that's okay!  At least she got two burgers in the sack!!!"   When we realized there were no fries,  I told him it was just her first day on the job.To my surprise, he  looked sympathetic and said, "Oh, wow.  Then she did good!"
   After lunch, we both got back in the water and separated at the water slide.
   As I made my way across the  pool, trying to exercise my joints,  I saw an older swimmer like myself, a man  who looked a little rough around the edges,  and I realized he was  just glaring at me.  I've gone to this park for years and never had a cross word from anyone so I  decided to ignore Mr. Grumpy, which I did.  Everybody has their bad days and everybody else I saw was very friendly.  Maybe he was in the water for the same reason I was: arthritis can definitely wipe the smile off your face...
  Later, while I was sitting at the picnic table reading, I again saw this man several  tables away, leaning over and frowning in my direction.  There was no one else in between us - the other tables were empty.  I thought:  what is this man's problem?
   And then I knew. Or thought I knew.
   One over-weight, grandmotherly  white woman and one young, super-bright, polite, funny African American boy.
   I immediately assumed the guy was a bigot and then spent the next few minutes thinking of what I'd like to say to him:  sorry, the child and I don't hang out with bigots... or you needn't glare in my direction, the opinion of racist red-necks has never been high on my list of things to worry about...
   By the time I got through formulating my "snappy" responses, he was gone and  the child was still happily wandering  all over the pool, having conquered his fear admirably.  From the beginning of our time together until the end, the boy was never anything but helpful, polite, funny, and appreciative.
   Hopefully the disgruntled guy a few tables down was just having a bad day...
   If not, then maybe ... if  we ever run across him again - which is not likely - and if he ever changes his manners and minds his "p's and q's"..  then maybe -  just maybe -  we'll let him associate with us and in time - who knows?  The boy's impeccable outlook on life might eventually rub off on the old guy, making him a better person in the process...