When my
youngest son, Robert, was six or seven years old, he and I had the opportunity
to travel to Houston with my oldest son, my husband, and their Boy Scout troop to
visit the Johnson Space Center and the Museum of Natural History (which
included a one hour “Mission to Mars”). Since I grew up during the heyday of
the space program and wanted to be the first lady astronaut (even though I get
sick on carnival rides), I was anxious to go. I didn’t find out until AFTER
we’d paid that the deal included camping with the troop on Friday night at a
“primitive” campsite.
I’d never
ever been camping, not once, but I had no preconceived ideas about the glory of
it. Not so Robert; he was THRILLED about his first campout with the "big
guys." The five hour trip to Houston sandwiched between two hyper scouts
didn’t bother him. Waiting an hour for the rest of the troop to show up didn’t
bother him—he was too excited about the prospect of a REAL campout.
When we
finally reached the campsite, it was HOT, it was MUDDY, it was ALMOST DARK,
there were MOSQUITOS the size of sparrows, and I just wanted to go to sleep. My
husband expertly set up the three man tent, and Robert and I “got ready” to go
to sleep. As soon as we crawled into the airless tent, Robert looked at me. “This
is camping out?” he asked. “Yep, this is camping out,” I sagely replied.
We tried
to find a comfortable position in the stifling heat. The scouts were making
about as much noise as twelve boys can make. This lasted for at least three
hours. Once they settled down, a group of (obviously) drunk young people who
were camped not too far away turned up their music to full volume, drowning out
the bullfrogs in the nearby pond.
Robert
looked at me again. Sweat rolled down his face. “Camping out is not much fun. I
thought it would be fun.”
I patted
his hand, and he managed to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion. I dozed off and
apparently rolled onto my side too close to the tent. I was awakened by the
sudden presence of a weight on my face. A BULLFROG had jumped onto the thin
tent where my face happened to be! (I'm proud of myself—I did NOT scream.)
I hadn’t
expected camping to be any different from what I experienced (except the frog
part), but poor Robert’s “great expectations,” born in his fertile imagination,
were utterly dashed.
Aren’t
you glad our great expectations of heaven will never disappoint us? Our finite minds can’t even begin to imagine
the glory that awaits the faithful--eternity in the presence of Almighty
God!
I think I
can safely say that no frogs will jump on our faces there.
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