This afternoon my daughter called me from college to tell me she was coming home to spend the weekend with us.  I was super excited until she said “Yeah, and Dad is taking us repelling tonight”.  WHAT?!  Repelling??  That thing where you dangle from the edge of a cliff with nothing but a clip attaching you to a rope that may or may not be anchored safely to a rock that could crumble at any moment sending you crashing down to certain death??? That kind of repelling!?!?

Now the interesting part of the story is the fact that earlier in the day my husband said he was going to go “hiking” with the kids….Hiking is a heck of a lot different than repelling!!! So, yeah, my husband has some splainin’ to do on that one!!

So early evening my daughter and son arrive home and immediately the three of them head out the door to go repelling. And there was not a thing I could do to stop them.  Given that my husband had already promised to take them, if I would have said they couldn’t go then that would have made me the bad parent who never lets them have any fun.  And given that my kids are both over 18 and technically adults (I say technically because any parent of children 18 and 21 knows that it is extremely difficult to think of your children as actual adults yet – heck my 21 year old son runs around in Sponge Bob Square Pants Pajama Bottoms with a Batman T-shirt still!)  But given that they are technical adults, I can’t really dictate what they can and can’t do anymore, so I had to stand by and watch them pull away.

Then I went to my room and proceeded to give myself the pep talk – “Amy it does no good to worry…that won’t change anything…heck you have written tons of blogs on this very topic so you have to live by your own advice!”  Which worked for the first few hours until it got dark outside…not just kind of dark out…pitch black dark out and still no garage door opening signaling they are home.  Still there is nothing I can really do but wait at this point.  And that’s when I realized that sometimes you just gotta cross your fingers and say a prayer that everything will turn out okay, because frankly there just isn’t anything else you can do.  You have to recognize that some things are just out of your ability to control or change.  But two things you can always do are – cross your fingers, and then get on your knees and say a prayer.  The prayer part is the one that helps me the most.  It’s when you reach that point that you have no other option than to turn it over to God and let him be in charge from here.  Then trust Him that whatever happens He is in charge.  It’s not always easy to have faith in that…especially when it is pitch black outside and still no garage door is opening…but what are your options? You can be scared and afraid, or you can have faith and believe.  Being scared and afraid is pretty miserable.  Having faith and believing feels a heck of a lot better, and of those two options it’s the only option that might just make a difference in the outcome.

I believe God answers prayers.  Maybe not immediately, and maybe not in the way we wanted Him to, but He always answers us in the way that will ultimately be for our best good, of that I am certain.

I suppose the message tonight is this – when life gets hard and you are worried or stressed or scared…cross your fingers and say a prayer…then have faith it is all going to be okay in the end…and if it’s not okay then it’s not the end 🙂

That’s my phone! They are down the mountain safe and coming home!!! Prayer works people!  Prayer works!!!  Have an incredible day!  And smile!  It’s the weekend!!

~Amy