but remember to heed the warnings from Charlie Brown first – the continual battles with kite-eating tree, the running for miles but it never lifting from the ground, the mountains of knotted string…

I was thinking about good ole Charlie Brown yesterday as I sat on a rock on the beach, holding two of the many ends of string as my husband worked to undo a huge clump of knots that had baffingly appeared after one short period of the kite being in the air.  It was my son that enjoyed the brief flight, being pulled along as the kite lifted, spun and… banged to the ground.  That fleeting moment was the only one.  As I was watching his dad tackle a confusion of string, I thought, how long before he drops it and storms up the hill in search of scissors.  But he didn’t and I decided not to be a Lucy and tell him it was useless.

An hour later, after my hands had been replaced by branches, he came up from the beach with a glum look on his face.  The kite strings were still in a mess.  We left it for a while, and then, my cousin appeared, looked at it and said ‘give it here.  I like sorting things like that,”  and she did.  She was smiling as she told him to just keep it wound up like that, and not to go flying it.

It got me to thinking – how often do we face a knotty situation or relationship in our lives and want to just walk away, rather than spending time, trying to sort it out?  There is often a mentality these days of ‘I just can’t deal with this right now’.  I know there are cirmcumstances where it is just too hard.  But other times, I think we should give it our time, our patience and our hope.  And thank God for the people who come to help us through.

So, let’s go fly a kite, but get ready for the knots.