When I was a kid, I loved to roller-skate around our house. Thirty years later, I might have had inline skates with high-top shoes built on, but not in 1949. Instead, my feet had to glide on four steel rollers like wheels on a wagon. I used a key to turn the side screw and clamp the skate onto the soles of my ordinary laced-up walking shoes.
Skating required a significant degree of skill. If I wasn’t careful, I’d make a great turn and jerk my shoe out of the skate. That was a wipe-out for sure. Both the challenge and the fun came from the raised and cracked sections of the sidewalk, caused by the growth of huge tree roots. All the jumps and twists gave me a thrill, but a hard fall was inevitable.
Evidently, parents back then believed their children would be careful enough not to kill themselves. Nobody wore a helmet or saw a need for elbow, knee, and shin pads. When I fell and skinned my knee, I knew what to do: go crying to Mom.
The Band-Aids were good, but the hugs and kisses were what made me feel good, ready to go back out and face the world again.
Since my emotional wounds bleed and hurt worse than my physical cuts and scrapes, I still need a shoulder to cry on sometimes. That’s one reason it’s so good to know the Lord.