Dear Reader:

I read this true anecdote in Guidepost last year that still tickles me whenever I get a question that I find difficult to answer. Yesterday Mandy brought Eva Cate and Jake to Summerville since their teachers were being vaccinated and they didn’t have school.

It was a gorgeous day…we went park-crazy…parks with playgrounds, parks with statues, parks with fountains and Hutchinson Square right in the center of town with a mini- tour downtown.

We had a ball…but more than once Jake, who at six, is a sponge for detailed memory questions, asked me some crazy ones that I had no idea how to answer.

At some point he asked me if it hurt getting old…his eyes were very serious…he must have picked up on the fact that my gait stayed about ten feet behind the rest of the family.

I thought for a second and responded…”No, Jake, it doesn’t…except when I look in the mirror. He just sagely nodded and ran off to find another statue to climb.

I have to agree with this funny observation on aging from author, Barbara Johnson:

I’ve reached the age where it’s harder to think of my body as a temple. It’s more like a building project that got out of control.”

Now back to the Guidepost story.

A popular psychiatrist was on a radio call-in show and things were going quite well…at first. Then a caller frantically began listing all the things wrong in her life…her husband was an alcoholic, her son in a gang, her unmarried daughter was pregnant and their house just burned down.

The talk-show host and the psychiatrist looked at each other in bewilderment….’Where to start?‘ Dead silence flooded the airways.Finally the psychiatrist blurted out…”God only knows.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, then people in the studio audience started tittering…the host started chuckling and finally even the woman on the other end of the line began gasping in laughter as she realized the seemingly flippant response was true.

Later the psychiatrist realized where that response came from Deuteronomy 29:29….when we are at wit’s end corner…when life appears to be a mystery with no answer…only God knows the answer!

So until tomorrow….

Humor is the prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer. – Reinhold Niebuhr

“Today is my favorite day” (and so was yesterday) Winnie the Pooh

Headline: Fun in the Sun on a Beautiful Summerville Spring Day

The “Painted Rock Craze” must be alive and well in Summerville…Eva Cate found two…with address and message…one in Hutchinson Square and  at Azalea Park…she let Jake hide one while she found a new home for the other one. Lots of fun!