God's Medicine

We've spent many a day at the lake camping and exploring when we were kids, hubby and I. Of course we didn't know each other then and each of us have our own stories to tell. His family always camped in the main camping area with lots of family and friends with them. Camping was a very social time for him and his family. But my family tended to take the road less traveled.

We worked very hard finding a secluded place where we had the whole beach to ourselves. We liked it that way. It gave us a freedom that we craved. There was just something so liberating, even spiritual about being able to explore the secluded beaches and countryside undisturbed. It was something our parents craved for us and something I crave for my own children and grandchildren although it is getting much harder to do.

I spent hours and hours at our favorite spot examining each and every rock along the shoreline. I was fascinated by each individual shape, their color and how different they looked when they were either dry or wet. I was also blessed to have found lots of Indian arrow heads there... at one time I had a whole coffee can full. My dad told me they were made out of flint rock and that the old river channel used to run through there, so maybe the Indians sat there at the river's edge where we were sitting right then to make their arrowheads. He said they were the right size for very small game like rabbit or turkey. Boy, did that make my imagination go wild and it was during that time as a little girl that I decided I was an Indian. I didn't know until I was an adult that I really was, but it is funny how some things are just born in you.

Those memories are filled with the comfort and peace of a simpler time when we treasured everything around us. Those memories continue to sustain and comfort me through adulthood. Even though we don't camp anymore, hubby and I still go there as often as we can, even if it is just to drive through and reminisce. Sometimes I get so homesick and have such a desperate need to be there that it almost seems that God is drawing me there to comfort me and to worship. Even just a few minutes of lying on the sandstone rocks, soaking up the warmth they stole from the sun, looking up through the blackjack oaks and listening to the waves lap the shore is so healing and is, at least for me... God's medicine.