Panic Attack on The Lazy River

I used to hate going to White Water.

White Water, for all of those non-southerners that might stumble across this blog, is a middle schooler's dream- or, in my case, a middle schooler's nightmare.

White Water is a water park, where you can go (usually unsupervised) full of hundreds of other unsupervised middle schoolers in bathing suits.

They had a lazy river.

And water slides.

And a wave pool.

And they had funnel cakes- which in my mind was the only plus.

White Water was a prepubiscent's heaven.

Unless you were a fat, awkward middle schooler with glasses.

Like me.

Then, all of a sudden, you're stuck at a place for hours at a time where you're forced to walk around in your bathing suit, and you can't wear your glasses, so you hide them in a planter next to your beach chair and you have to walk around blind the entire day.

Like I said, White Water was not my favorite place.

But there was one part of White Water that I hated the most.

Worse then being the only girl in a one piece.

Worse then being the only girl in a one piece  that you got in the grandma section because it had a skirt attached ( and who doesn't want to be the 13 year old wearing the grandma skirted swim suit?)

Worse then getting into a raft with another girl that you thought was your friend because you are so blind that you start to identify people by their general blurred shape and hair color.

This was so much worse.

The  Cliffhanger.

A high rise free fall slide that sends you rushing nine stories down, into a dark,shallow watery grave.

Or at least that's how I saw it.

All of my friends would race up the stairs, practically pushing each other over to allow themselves to be thrown down this very large, very scary slide and I would stand at the bottom, urging my legs to move.

Trying to convince myself that it wasn't scary.

Trying to convince myself that it wasn't that high.

Trying to convince myself that it was safe.

But still, I remained, frozen at the bottom.

Sometimes, I think our life looks like that to us.

Especially when you're in your mid-twenties.

Everything looks big.

Everything looks scary.

Everything looks like more then we can handle.

Nothing seems safe.

And all of these changes come rushing towards us, sending us to a very dark and scary place- the unknown.

Sometimes, all I can look at is how big and scary the future seems.

And when my legs are frozen, and I can't seem to move, I have to remind myself that even though the future is big and scary, my God is that much bigger.

In the book of Job, we get the amazing opportunity to hear God tell us just how big He really is, and we begin to realize just how small we, and in turn, our problems, really are.

This whole chapter is amazing, so I'm going to just have to pick out a few of my favorite verses- but please, if you have a chance, go back and read Job 38.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?                                                         On what were its footings set,

    or who laid its cornerstone

Who shut up the sea behind doors

    when it burst forth from the womb when I made the clouds its garment
    and wrapped it in thick darkness,
 when I fixed limits for it
    and set its doors and bars in place,
 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
    here is where your proud waves halt’?

 Have you ever given orders to the morning,
    or shown the dawn its place

Can you bind the chains^[b] of the Pleiades?
    Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons   

 or lead out the Bear^[d] with its cubs? 

Do you know the laws of the heavens?

If I serve a God that is so big that he measured the Earth and set it's foundations,

If I serve a God that is so big that he can shut up the oceans behind doors,

If I serve a God that can loosen Orion's belt in the sky,

then how can I be scared about finding a job?

Or finding a husband?

Or moving to a different state?

How big is my God?

And how small am I?

And if He can arrange the constellations, then surely my life isn't nearly as difficult to set up.