dragging bottom...

Getting into the inner tubes proved to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. Claudie held them for us as we plopped our bottoms down in the cold water of the Oconaluftee River that runs through the downtown park in Cherokee, N.C. As each one of us settled in, we held the rope on the other tube for the next person until our little four tube train was ready to go. Out into the current we floated and for a few minutes, it was bliss.
Watching the children scampering in the water and floating by us, it looked so easy from the banks of the river. Being IN the river was a different proposition however. First, Mary Lynn wailed she was losing air in her tube and sinking down. We began to try to head towards shore but the current speeded up and we were held captive to the flow. Mary Lynn’s bottom made a personal acquaintance with most of the rocks in the river as we struggled towards shore. As Mary Lynn and Claudie beached on the rocks, Janis and I were floating on down unable to extricate ourselves from the tubes or the current. The river was no longer friendly but scary and there were no easy places to land. Finally, we were able to make our way to the banks underneath the main downtown bridge after much anxiety and screaming.
Walking up the path back to the park, we were uncertain whether to try again or not. Janis needed some time off to regain her balance so she stayed with Andy, our work camp family historian and videographer, as the rest of us tried again to master the art of tubing. Mary Lynn’s tube was flat as a pancake so we were a three tube train this time. Getting in the tube was a little easier, the water was not quite as cold, and we watched our fellow tubers to ascertain an exit plan. This time out we found the flow, avoided most of the rocks submerged just below the surface, and made shore without too much trouble. Janis rejoined us and the bliss grew with each successful trip.
The children began to play with us, the only old tubers on the river. They watched us with interest and fascination as we careened past them laughing and screaming. One little boy became our friend and we dubbed him our lifeguard. When we floated past him, he would grab our tubes and take us to shore. One time he dove under the water and came up beside me roaring like a shark scaring the bejeezus out of us. We listened to his fish story… I almost caught a fish by hand and he was huge… and praised his minnow collection. We were river buddies.
The writer of Psalms 46 knew about dragging bottom. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.’ Each of us in my work camp family had spent some time dragging bottom in the past year since our last reunion. Health issues, retirement or not, aging problems, financial concerns, relationship changes… those rocks in the bottom of the river of time had left marks on us. But we have gathered ourselves up and launched out into the river again and again, gathering courage and strength from those who love us and from the God of the Glad River that flows through the habitation of the Most High.
I give thanks for the laughter on the river that came after the fear on the river, the love that surprises me again every year when we gather, and for the One who first called us together in Cherokee, N.C. forty five years ago. We are children of God in the River of Life floating back to the One who is our resting place, our still water in the midst of the rocky bottoms. Thanks be to God for more than enough!