{"id":66,"date":"2012-11-27T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.124.95\/~redletu4\/dont-be-a-stranger-to-danger\/"},"modified":"2012-11-27T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:00:00","slug":"dont-be-a-stranger-to-danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidrupert\/dont-be-a-stranger-to-danger\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t be a Stranger to Danger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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It looked bad, as he clutched his wrist and grimaced in pain. Joshua,was just 11, and he was all boy. He had been stunt-jumping on his bicycle and had \u201cbiffed it,\u201d adolescent talk for \u201chad a major accident and lived to tell.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
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This was a familiar path we trod to the Emergency Room. I don\u2019t how many, but it was at least 10.\u00a0 And we even had a nurse in the house to mitigate some of the emergencies, but still this son of mine lived a rough-and-tumble life.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The wrist was broken. This was the third broken one in three successive Junes. The poor kid thought that summer vacation in a cast was normal. He didnt\u2019 whine. He didn\u2019t mope. It was a two-hour diversion from the rest of summer. He played baseball, football and soccer with that cast. We went to the gulf of Mexico and he was outfitted him with a waterproof sleeve that was bright blue, warning the underwater world that this was a boy not be messed with.\n

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Throughout the rest of the year, he was usually sporting bandages, wraps, compresses or casts. Any day, I was expecting some overly-sensitive child protective services agent to knock on the door, waving papers. I was ready to fight for my son\u2019s right to be a boy.<\/i> \u00a0\n

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He\u2019s put all that medical experience to good use. He\u2019s now a top nurse at a hospital and I\u2019m so proud of him. I wonder how many little boys he\u2019s cared for over the years and he looked at them with knowing look. \u201cDude, how you got this injury is just so awesome.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nThere is something about living on the edge that is dismissed as foolishness in our grown-up society. People are taking all the fun out of our society. There\u2019 s a new report<\/a> about how dangerous bouncy castles are! Really? \u00a0\u201cBan them,\u201d they cry.\u00a0<\/span>

<\/span>But my problem is that I have mistaken dangerous things for stupid things<\/i>, and made tragic mistakes that were just plain dumb. I\u2019ve spent a lifetime sorting out the difference.<\/span>

<\/span>The older we get, the more measures we take. We just play it safe. We don\u2019t walk on the ledge because we might fall, meanwhile we miss the view. We don\u2019t run down the mountain, hair flying in the wind because we might trip. We forget what it is to spin on the merry go round so many times our insides are turned out and our faces hurt with laughter.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
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And there\u2019s a call to exercise my faith dangerously.<\/b> It means following that nudge to do the right thing, even when public opinion is against me. It means walking the high wire to reach the other side where the untouchables, the broken, are. It means living on the edge of popular culture with a distinctively unpopular message.\n

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Josh wore his casts with pride, happily retelling the exploits behind them. I thought they would ruin his summers, but actually they were testaments to a life lived well. And to this date he has a list of scars and a story behind every one of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nLiving dangerously sounds scary. But once you\u2019ve ducked under the \u201cdo not cross\u201d tape,\u00a0you\u2019re one step closer to joy<\/span>.\n

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Please, share with a friend if you feel moved.
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It looked bad, as he clutched his wrist and grimaced in pain. Joshua,was just 11, and he was all boy. He had been stunt-jumping on his bicycle and had \u201cbiffed it,\u201d adolescent talk for \u201chad a major accident and lived to tell.\u201d This was a familiar path we trod to the Emergency Room. I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't be a Stranger to Danger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It looked bad, as he clutched his wrist and grimaced in pain. Joshua,was just 11, and he was all boy. 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