My sister was telling one of my daughters about a time when I did a particularly dumb thing. I was probably 7 years old and my best friend lived next door, his name was Lance. He was a year older than I was. If he suggested something, I was usually eager to go along with his idea. So, one night when our parents were playing cards and not paying us any attention, Lance said we should hide from them. I thought it was a grand idea. It would be so funny to see them looking for us whenever they finally realized we weren’t where they thought we were. We hid in the floor of his parent’s Jeep. When they did coming looking for us it was pretty late. They walked right by the Jeep and never looked in. We thought that was hilarious! After a few minutes though, it became apparent that they were frantic and terrified. We lived very close to the lake and I knew they were thinking about all the terrible possibilities. When we finally got out of that Jeep we were in the biggest trouble of our lives.

I wish I could say that was the last dumb thing we did; but we did dumb things ALL the time. We just had very little fear and obviously rarely thought about the consequences of our actions.

Fast forward to now and I am a very protective parent. I realize now that it was only by God’s grace that I ended up okay.  I always think through all the things that could have happened. But at the end of the day, we all do dumb things and we just have to pray and hope that God’s protection will overcome anything dumb we may do!