May 21, 2017
Three Generations of Thrill Seekers (Scream!)
As a teenager, I went to Six Flags over Georgia with my youth group. My mom was one of the chaperones. (That really means adults who want to have fun and use watching the kids as an excuse.) My mother loves roller coasters. I rode Scream with my mom. (LOVED it!) I rode everything else in the whole park too, but that ride was my favorite because my brain envisioned the car flying off or the wooden ride collapsing due to a secret termite infestation. I loved scary and risky so I loved thrill rides. I thought it was super neat that my mom loved them too.
Fast forward to my own little ones and we happen to be at Six Flags one day. (It was supposed to be Wild Adventures, but we didn’t check operating day until at 4am when we are on the way. That park was closed so my crew is like “Let’s visit family in Atlanta!” and they were busy until afternoon so Six Flags it was.)
Big girls and Louis went for the big rides with long lines while Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, Lucas, and I went to the kiddie zone and they had an awesome time. Lucas, we learned, was just as much a crazy risky-feeling ride lover that all the kids were. (Probably the result of Daddy, uncles, and big sisters swinging him around!) We gathered together and swapped partners with me and Lucas as “base” since Lucas couldn’t go on anything by himself and I was dispatching. (In an amusement park, 8 hours away, yes, working.)
Jillian hadn’t done any roller coasters yet because almost everything she missed by a hair. An hour from close, Louis asked each girl what ride they wanted to do. Jillian instantly shouts “Scream with Mom!” This results in me and my baby girl riding Scream for her first roller coaster ride. I’m not much of a picture taker, (NEVER selfies) but when we got in the car, Jillian says, “I want a picture with you on my first ride!” (1st roller coaster, but I guess all the other rides didn’t count.) So, my first attempt at a selfie was me and my baby girl on the same ride I rode with my mom twenty years before.
We are a thrill seeker (or crazy, nuts for brains, no concept of reality, love to be scared to death) family. We just see the fun and go, no planning, no thinking about what if this or that fails; we just trust that everything will be okay and we will enjoy the ride we are on. It sounds a lot like life. You never know what you will find. You never know what challenge or risk or turn will be ahead. You just have to hold on tight and go for it. Trusting that God will take care of anything you can’t handle, give you strength and tools for what you can, and hold the safe end in His hand.
The fun comes with being thankful in every moment, finding the good even within the challenges, and encouraging others along the way.
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~ Nancy Tart