You Say “Lost”…I Say “Misled”

“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”- Psalm 126:2

This past weekend some of the AIM staff members decided to enjoy the fall season by spending our Friday night at the North Georgia Corn Maze.

**Yes, I know at this point some of you are thinking “This is what you do for fun in Georgia?” And my response would be “Yes.” 🙂

So…we met at the AIM base at 6:30pm and headed out to the adventure that awaited us which was about 20 minutes away. Or…I guess I should say would normally be 20 minutes away. For us, it ended up being an hour away due to Friday night football traffic all traveling on a one lane road. During our mini-road trip, we were able to enjoy the lovely Georgia countryside as well as the coveted trophy that our friend Ashley had made for the winning team. So, when we finally arrived at the corn maze the sun was setting and it was starting to get really cold. We all bundled up and set out for some healthy competition. My girlfriend, Ericka and I decided that we would be on a team together because we are both very competitive, and we both felt the need to win and proudly flaunt the “corn” trophy. As we exited the car we could already taste the victory. We took the first 30 minutes to take some wonderfully random pictures with the group and then we all gathered around to hear the rules. I must admit that at this point my adrenaline was pumping, and I didn’t hear much of the instructions. What I did gather though was that there were 7 “stations” throughout the 3 mile corn maze, and someone would be standing there with a hole-puncher ready to punch our card as we reached each location.

So, we all got in a line and we were off. Ericka and I (being the competitors we are) decided it was best to go in a full sprint in order to beat all the other teams. We ran, ran and ran some more until we got away from everyone and realized we had no idea where we were. Let me just say that the miniature map that we had of the maze was not the most accurate depiction. So…we kept walking thinking we would eventually have to run into one of the people holding the hole-punchers. This continued for about 40 minutes. We could feel the pressure as we would cross paths with the other teams. Our arch-enemies (the guy’s team) kept passing us and finally made a comment that stop #5 was around the corner. We continued in that direction and finally found our first one after walking for an hour! It is at this point that we also realized that there was NOT a person standing ready to punch our cards, but instead there was just a small, dark podium with the hole-puncher on it.

**I feel the need at this point in the story to stop and say that I don’t feel that we were “lost” as much as we were “misled.” As I recall…someone in our group had specifically told us that there was going to be a living, breathing person ready to stamp our cards. So, this basically means that we must have run past so many of those small podiums before actually realizing we were supposed to stop. (Can you tell I am still bitter?)

The things that occurred after this could fill up another blog, but to make a long story short I will sum up the rest of the night with the following:

*We walked for over 2 hours and still had one “station” we could not find.

*I twisted my ankle.

*Ericka was so hungry that she was forced to try and eat raw corn off of the ground (it was not good!).

*At one point we were so tired of walking in circles that we were very close to just lying down on the ground and watching the stars.

*We ended up at “station 1” at least 5 times although never finding “station 6” once.

*Both being from Alabama, Ericka and I decided to enjoy the rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama” that was belted over the loud speaker during our 2 hour walk. This was one of the highlights of the night.

*Some of our limbs ended up being frozen and still have not completely thawed out.

*We had to be dragged out of the maze by one co-worker and two kids under 16-years-old.

*By the time we got out of the maze, the only people left waiting on us were the people who dragged us out and the poor soles who were supposed to drive us home.

*We had to see our coveted trophy given to another team that beat us by over an hour difference.

I have to say it was not my finest hour of competition. We realized after the fact that it was probably not the wisest thing to put the two most directionally challenged people on the same team, but all in all we had a wonderful time in the cornfields of North Georgia and we all left with lasting memories!

For His Glory,

Caroline 🙂

Ps. 56:3

**For more pictures, click on “See My Pics.”