Riding the Waves

The blue drum on the Beatles Rock Band set never worked well, and then it stopped working altogether. More members of our DI team dropped out to the point where I am not sure we should continue, as a major goal of running the group was to bring a consistent group of friends/peers together for Asherel. Another science group we could have joined, in fact begged us to join when I thought I didn't want to (with a full roster on my DI team then), now has a waiting list, so we may or may not get in that group. Grandma in Florida seems to be failing rapidly and may be living with us at least temporarily as soon as next week.
Matt and Karissa return for the weekend for a wedding we are all going to and I need to vacuum and shop for some yummy dinner, shrimp and feta (?), so they will keep returning home...but I have to make a decision on our science/peer group asap, as all the groups are nearly or already full at this point for next semester. The three inflatable kayaks are drying on the ping pong table and I need to finish wiping off all the sand, and pack them away in their cute little carrying case. Oh, and I better learn the Algebra 2 lesson before I need to teach it to Asherel.....

Sometimes everything coalesces into a wave of struggles, which individually might not give us pause, but collectively sometimes threaten to swamp the boat.

One of my favorite parts of kayaking on the lake is when motorboats go by, they create a huge wake which the kayak bobs over. It is really fun and about as exciting as my timid heart can take. However, if the trough is too deep and the waves come too rapidly, we take on water.

So it is with struggles. When they come too often and too rapidly, I sometimes feel like I might not stay afloat. They don't even need to be too big...just too frequent. As I was pondering over what to do to provide the social and intellectual peer group my dear daughter needs, she brought the drum set to the table, carved a spot in the midst of the damp kayaks, and proceeded to dismantle it. She requested a tiny screwdriver. She rummaged for other tools and for the next 3 hours, was bent over the blue drum examining its guts.

"Can you fix it?" I asked.
"I don't know," she answered, "But it can't get any worse and the warranty is expired, so I may as well try."
"What do you think about joining a Robotics group?" I called from the computer desk as I read over the plethora of creative challenges that group would tackle and noticed that there were some 50 students all Asherel's age involved in it.
She pulled a wire carefully from the inner labyrinth of parts of the now dismantled blue drum and answered, "No, I am not scientific. I wouldn't know what to do."

Ultimately a glued in wire that could not be unglued did her in. She knew what to do to fix the drums but was stymied by the glue. She scraped at it for about an hour, and then went back to her other school work. Her tenacity impressed me greatly. Her wonderful attitude that she may as well give it a try though success seemed unlikely was refreshing. Her statement that she was not scientific made me chuckle as she lay in the midst of the carefully dismantled electronics.

And it gave me a shot of encouragement. I prayed that God would guide me in the midst of some annoying and some very troubling waves on my horizon. And then I started to ride each one, one at a time, as they came at me. Really once you are in the boat, you don't have much choice. I just have to keep remembering that He who put me in the boat in the first place designed the waves that wash over me as well and I am pretty sure my warranty has not expired.

Jeremiah 5:22
²² Should you not fear me?" declares the LORD.
"Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
they may roar, but they cannot cross it.