God and the water slide

This morning the kids and I met some friends from church at a local pool for a play date. This pool has an awesome kids area complete with a play set that doubles as a sprinkler/splash pad and slide. You climb up the steps while being splashed all around you and then go down an enclosed slide into the [very shallow] water. From the moment we got there Corrinne was dying to get up to that slide. Over and over she climbed the whole way through all the sprinklers and would get right up to the slide before mean ol' mom would take her back down to the water below as she was kicking and screaming. She was relentless! (I'm telling you - the girl knows what she wants!) After 50 trips up and down the steps with her I finally just gave in and let her go down!

Before you all choke on your coffee (or Mt. Dew, if you're like me) rest assured that I didn't just send her down this huge slide all alone into the water below. My friend, Dena, climbed up as far as she could into the bottom of it and I lowered her down as far as I could so she didn't slide the entire length of the slide. But 11 month old Corrinne went down a slide that kids 8 years older than her were waiting in line for!

At first she loved it! Dena said she her smile took up her whole face, but that smile quickly turned into a look of shock, doubt, and maybe a smidgen of fear. Then after Dena grabbed her at the bottom of the slide she let out the tiniest little whine and the biggest bottom lip. After that she was pretty content to sit on mommy's lap.

As I was telling mom about it she laughed and said, "Sometimes what we think we want so badly doesn't end up being as great as we think it is." True that, momma! How many times have I've been certain about God's will in any given area of my life only to find out what I thought was it, was most definitely not it? How often do we fight God for something? I look back on everything I was told "no" to before finally hearing a "yes" from God with so much gratitude. What God had planned is turning out to be so much better than I ever could've planned...

God knows what He's doing. Its hard to remember sometimes but just like I could've saved Corrinne the terror of flying down a slide way too big for her, God wants to protect us from enduring unnecessary fear and pain. And a face full of water.

Or that horrible wedgie you get from the serious water slides. ;)