Seth and I were driving somewhere and I was talking about my very first VBS at my old church, Crescent Springs Church of God. It was at this church where I met Jada. While I am not qualified to diagnose her disability, I would say that she was autistic in some way. She was developmentally delayed. It was an amazing week working with her and God truly did some things within me, teaching me about service and such. Also, I was able to be Christ to an unchurched family.
Anyway, as I described Jada to him, I was telling him that she wallered in my lap all night.
He looked at me blankly.
He had never heard of that word, so I defined it for him: “You know,” I said, “when a kid sits in your lap and moves around a lot. It can be exhausting.” He didn’t know what the heck I was talking about but after a while he looked at me with that you’re cute smile and said, “Is that like ‘wallowing’?”
A light bulb flicked in my pretty little head. “Ya’ know, I’ve read that word before and, until know, never thought of the similarities between them.” I grew up saying “wallering.” It sounds like haller. Is haller a word–not as in haller back to me when you get there, but as in that great indentation in the ground on the back part of the property. Anyway, I guess Seth caught me in a southern word. And from now on I’ll have to seriously think about waller vs wallow.