“Yes, Mom!!”

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Psalm 32:8 (ESV)

This was taken at the base of Jones Falls in Tennessee. It was dark with a misty rain coming down when I got there so I did not see much. It is too bad too as the falls are beautiful.

Take a close look at the bottom right hand corner of the sign. See the “Yes, Mom!!?” 😊

I would have loved to have been there when the person wrote that to see if they obeyed Mom or not. Would you have obeyed? Mom’s eyes were not on the individual to see, but God says His are. Even so, if you are like me, and we are all going to be honest, our answer probably has been or is still, “Um.” 

You do not see a lot of warning signs like this along the Appalachian Trail (AT), but they are peppered along the way here and there. It is generally pretty obvious why most of them are posted where they are.

Falls tend to be slicker than trying to pick up a juicy watermelon seed on your wet plate. Waterfalls are not very soft on the bottom either.

When I summited Moosilauke Mountain on the AT, I descended going north on at a VERY steep grade along the Beaver Brook Cascades. The Cascades are breathtaking, but the views of the falls come at a pretty high cost. It is so steep in some places that you must use anchored wooden or iron steps and/or rungs along portions of the trail.

At one section of the falls I just couldn’t find a spot to get a good picture. So, what do I do? “Don’t look Mom.”

Now I want you to know that I only half cheated. I very carefully reached out on to the slick rock with ONE foot but kept my other foot on good ground, well, on the trail anyway. You know what happened next right? The next thing I knew, I was looking at my feet and the sky rather than the falls.

I consider myself to be a pretty good faller. I usually just collapse fast and loose, and I am generally good to go; just a little dirtier. Not this time. I came down only after I first caught some air, and then I came down hard; really hard. I landed right on my left hip, and thankfully right beside a young Spruce tree that stopped me from sliding anywhere.

Boy did I hurt; I did not just walk that one off.  I carried that pain around for a few days as I continued on, not just in my body, but on my conscience too. I knew better. “Sorry, Mom.” ☹ “Yes Lord, I heard Your warning too. I knew the way You were telling me to go. Thank you for protecting this wayward child of yours…, again.”

The reason why the simple sentence, “Yes, Mom,” resonates so much with us is that we clearly hear Mom’s and God’s counsel, we understand the wisdom of their counsel, and we know that they give their clear, wise counsel out of love for us, but there is just this other force in us that still wants to proceed forward our way. We think, I am different than the others, smarter, I will be more careful, I will only “half” cheat and the excuses, rationalizations, basically the “foolishness” goes on and on. ☹

For some of us though, there is a time in our life when the, “Yes Mom,” and “I hear you, Lord,” begins to have a different meaning to us and influence on us. I am referring to their intended meaning and influence.

Some of us must learn the hard way, like almost breaking a hip and sliding down a cascade of falls. Some of us learn by just racking up one unfortunate situation after another until we finally say, “Uncle!” The real sad one is that some never learn. ☹

For those of us who have finally learned, now we say, “Yes, Mom,” or “Yes, Lord I hear You,” maybe even quoting Psalm 32:8 now.  We smile remembering some of our bygone days of disaster, or near disaster, and walk away from the danger still smiling.

What does, “Yes, Mom,” or “I hear you Lord,” mean to you and me today? Are we still laughing at messages warning us of danger as we continue to walk straight towards it, or are we now smiling to ourselves, thankful we have gotten smart enough to heed these warnings?

Well…, most of the time.

Next time you or I come to a warning sign, I hope we think carefully about how to proceed.  Is it going to be, “Yes, Mom,” or “Lord,” or “Don’t look,” probably soon to be followed by, “I’m sorry?”