My kids keep asking me if I’ll bounce on the new trampoline with them. I keep telling them that I can bounce without the trampoline, thank you very much. Besides I could get hurt on that thing. Not just the average compound-fracture-when-you-splatter-on-the-ground kind of injury. No, I’m telling you. Women over 40 do not want to sass gravity.
For instance, a younger woman can see a friend across the yard and give a big, friendly wave. Not so we of the over 40 crowd. If I were to give one of those big waves at this stage in my life, the hand/wrist part of the wave would be long over before that fluttery stuff between my elbow and shoulder stopped waving. No one wants to be that friendly.
These days I have a different wave. For interested wave-impaired readers, here are the instructions: “Raise arm until elbow is almost even with shoulder. While careful to keep all of upper arm stationary, wiggle fingers – and only fingers – vigorously in a friendly fashion. Slowly and carefully lower arm. If no part of you has slapped another, a successful post-forty wave has been accomplished.”
How can I get on the trampoline with this kind of instability? What if while my feet are touching the trampoline, the rest of me is still in the air? Couldn’t I get hurt when all that stuff is coming down and the rest of me is flying back up? I might meet myself coming and going. Splitting atoms hardly seems more dangerous. I guess I could wrap all my not-so-stationary parts with duct tape or something. But that could take a lot of duct tape. I’m thinking “U.F.O.”
Life definitely has its ups and downs. Let’s “bounce” this idea around: For every “down,” God gives us an opportunity to become someone else’s “up.” Second Corinthians 1:3-5 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
Isn’t it amazing that the Lord can use our down times to help others in theirs? And according to this passage, for every down we suffer, Jesus – who knows hurt to the max – gives comfort that reaches so much deeper than the hurt. We can’t experience pain bigger than his comfort. No matter what we suffer, his comfort is immense enough to cover it. Not only cover it, fill it. Not only fill it, but overflow it!
Knowing the Father of Compassion comforts in mass quantity can add a little bounce to any day. The good kind of bounce. It’s guaranteed to put a spring in your step. No duct tape required.
RHONDA RHEA / contributing columnist