Epilogue - Cruising through Peaceful Water

CHAPTER 12

April 30, 2009
My Study at Calvary Presbyterian Church

“Boating is a lifetime of pleasure interrupted by occasional moments of pure terror.” Anonymous

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart. Meister Eckhart

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure. Meister Eckhart

“He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Then the disciples were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (Mark 4:39)

Today, I just spent 2 hours with a grieving family. Their loved one, a young mother of two children - 2 yrs and 13 months old - had suddenly and unexpectedly died at home. Their grief was palpable. No words could be found to try and salve their wounded souls. All I could do was to sit and be present; to weep with them for their loss, and to offer what little support I could.

One day shy of her 40th birthday, their lives were full and their plans for the future bright. In a sudden and unexpected turn, an entire family’s life was turned upside down. A bright future of exciting plans had evaporated almost instantly. The darkness of grief is like a brooding storm that envelops everyone and everything in its path in a foreboding gloom.

It’s difficult to imagine how an accident or sudden loss will affect one’s life. Seldom do you have a chance to plan for such an event. Yet most people seem to live daily with a sense of invincibility, blissfully living as though nothing can or will happen to them. That’s how we had been living life. While never really believing we were immune to injury, death or loss, it had never really been a conscious part of our thinking. It was certainly not part of our planning for the future.

In just a few, brief, grinding moments, the unthinkable, unplanned, unwelcome specter of mortality became foremost in our thinking. In those first moments, every other part of our life blurred into the background in the same way the details of a cheering crowd fade into indistinguishable blurs in a close up photograph of a sports action scene.

Earlier that day, weddings, moves, new houses, jobs and friendships had been the subjects of our conversations and private thoughts. By dinner time, all those things had been stuffed into a hidden recess of our hearts and minds as questions of life and death assaulted our sense of reality.

Today, thirteen years later, the mournful wail of an ambulance or the chaotic aftermath of a serious accident scene still cause haunting, echoing thoughts of life’s uncertainty pulsing through our souls. Not only are the vivid memories of our own experience brought boiling to the surface, we also are moved to think of how some other family’s life has been altered forever. “Were they prepared for this? How will they deal with the shock, pain, grief, uncertainty and loss that will be their portion – to some degree at least – as they enter into this new phase of life?”

Our hearts ache for them and the decisions and trials that lay ahead for them. There is also a part of us that wants to reach out, put an arm of reassurance on their shoulder and tell them it will be all right. Somehow, no matter how difficult the situation may be and how high the storm waves may seem, they will find a way through. The storm will pass, leaving the scars of its relentless power. But it will pass.

Over the course of the past thirteen years, we have come to see that the instantaneous changes that howled with gale force into our lives in those brief moments were different from what we were planning but they weren’t necessarily bad changes. Just as nature-caused forest fires actually are part of God’s way of restoring and keeping a forest ecology healthy, trials and tribulations are used by God to ultimately restore a person’s basic sense of health and priority.

The lives we had envisioned and the activities we had so looked forward to had been altered dramatically. But the lives we were given have proven to be even more meaningful and appreciated than we first imagined.

I am not sure where I first heard the story but I read it again in the book, “Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul.” Written from a first person perspective the short story “A Trip to Holland” narrates the personal struggle of a young expectant mother whose long awaited first child was born with an unpredicted condition of Down’s syndrome.

(The author) poignantly tells of the struggle she and her husband had in accepting this challenge in their lives. When asked by others how she coped with the experience, she equates their experience to that of a person planning a long awaited trip to Italy. In planning such a trip you buy travel books, you plan tours of sights you especially want to see; you even learn bits and pieces of the language so that once you arrive in Italy, you will be able to communicate with the local citizens. As you get closer and closer to your departure, the excitement and anticipation build to a fevered pitch. The anticipation is almost too much and you even have trouble sleeping because you are so excited about going on this trip to Italy.

The day for departure finally arrives and you board the plane for the long flight across the Atlantic. Finally the plane touches down and the flight attendant’s voice comes over the intercom welcoming you to Holland. You look out the window to see, not olive trees, historic ruins and beautiful Mediterranean weather, but the much, much different landscape of the Netherlands.

You are shocked and disheartened. You had looked forward so much to traveling to Italy. Now, here you are in Holland. The airline officials tell you there is nothing that can be done. You will have to spend your vacation in Holland instead.

Eventually, you come to accept this change of travel and you decide that you will make the best of the situation. As you begin to explore Holland you realize that it is beautiful as well. There are windmills, canals, tulip fields and wonderful food. There is nothing wrong with Holland. In fact it is a wonderful place and you find yourself enjoying it as much, if not more so than you would have enjoyed Italy. It’s just different.

That is much the way we have come to feel about our lives since this accident. It is no worse a life; it is just different. In fact, there are many parts of our lives that we have come to appreciate more than if it had never happened:
- sleeping next to and holding each other in our own bed;
- the tastes of food other than hospital food;
- witnessing the marriage vows of our daughters (and me being able to walk them down the aisle;
- the fresh scent of breath in a fir and cedar forest;
- standing beside a glacier fed stream;
- standing once again in the pulpit to preach a sermon
- taking the first, wobbly pedals on my mountain bike
- mowing the grass
- playing on the floor with grandsons
- a walk on a forested path around a fog shrouded lake
- simply watching another sunrise or sunset

These were all things we would have taken more or less for granted before. Now we don’t assume that any of these simple pleasures are guaranteed. We gratefully accept them as precious gifts to cherish for the moment, knowing that each of them – and so many more – are gifts of grace.


Because life has returned to a relative state of normalcy for us, we often find ourselves sliding back into those old ways of thinking. Once again, we assume that our futures are guaranteed and that our plans can’t be foiled. Over and over again, we are reminded that is not so. We need to live each moment as though it were a gift to be cherished.

During the early years of our marriage, when Judy and I lived in Bellevue, Washington, our favorite activity on a free afternoon was to drive across one of the floating bridges that span Lake Washington, traverse across the Westlake and Ballard areas and eventually arrive at the Hiram M Chittendom Locks.

The locks are a Seattle landmark and an engineering marvel. They enable ships and personal vessels to travel between Lake Union and Puget Sound- an elevation difference of 23 feet. After parking, we would first wend our way across the lockage to the fish ladder where every year, all varieties of Salmon would perform their nature-bound ritual of spawning. Then we would sit on the grassy knoll overlooking the large lock and marvel at the variety of private yachts, sloops, launches, runabouts and canoes. In the course of a busy weekend such as the opening day of boating season, several hundred boats of every shape, size and condition would pass through those locks; either traveling out to salt water or coming back to fresh.

Because we were financially destitute, we would look at some of the boats passing by and dream to ourselves, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to someday own a boat?” I have to be honest and say that it was probably more my dream than it was Judy’s. More than the dream of owning a boat, the dream of visiting one of the area’s many secluded coves, or cruising past the majestic Olympic mountains; perhaps even traveling north to the San Juan Islands or Canada captivated us.

We dreamed about it because it seemed unrealistic if not impossible. But it did sound exotic. We imagined all sorts of adventures as we wondered who the people owning these boats were and where they were headed. It was fun to live vicariously through the seemingly unattainable fortunes of others. And so, time after time, we returned to gawk and dream of faraway places and adventuresome travel by boat.

Those dreams became shadowy memories as our lives went on. We began a family. We moved to Denver where I could attend Seminary and prepare for pastoral ministry. Financial pressures only seemed to deepen as our only source of income was my part-time youth ministry job in a local church. We also managed an apartment complex to help defray the cost of rent. Owning a rowboat seemed an unattainable pipe dream; let alone a boat that could cruise the waters of Puget Sound.

After seminary, we returned to the greater Seattle area. I had accepted my first pastoral call at First Presbyterian Church in Renton. The busy demands of ministry grew leaving us little free time. Judy enrolled in a program to finish her undergraduate degree. Our girls were beginning school. What free time we did have was spent doing fun, but cheap activities with them. We would ride a Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge Island, or prowl the Seattle waterfront, or go camping in the Cascade Mountains. These were great times. Again, the dream of boating was a long-forgotten dream.

In 1984, we moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The desert is certainly not conducive to boating; although many people do own small boats to fish and water ski on some of the reservoirs that interrupt the flow of the Rio Grande River as it inexorably snakes its way from its headwaters in Colorado through the valley floor of New Mexico desert canyons and on to the Ocean.

I was busy in the pastorate. Judy began a teaching career. Kresta and Melissa – now in later elementary years – were involved in piano lessons, softball, studies, friends and youth activities at church. Enjoying our backyard swimming pool and an occasional trip to the Sacramento mountains for camping or snow skiing were our free time activities.

Then the kids were grown. It happened all too fast. We wondered where the years went. We had no regrets because we had spent lots of quality time as a family. But now a new passage of life was approaching. Kresta moved to the Oregon coast and found love. Melissa was finishing at NMSU and would soon be married. We wondered what to do with our impending “empty-nest” years.

The acceptance of the call to pastor Calvary Presbyterian Church in Enumclaw marked the onset of this transition phase in our lives. With the girls grown and starting families of their own, whole new vistas began to open up to us as we looked forward to the future. A move to the northwest offered especially tantalizing opportunities.

We were due to arrive and begin ministry in Enumclaw on July 1. Having notified our congregation in Las Cruces that we would be leaving, my last Sunday was to have been June 15th. Our plan was to leave the next day and take a scenic, leisurely drive to Enumclaw, celebrating our 25th anniversary along the way.

We had a rough draft outline of our short and long term plans. The future glistened before us with limitless possibilities of fun, rewarding and exciting plans.

Then the accident happened and all bets were off. Having survived the ordeal, a striking thought that dogged us repeatedly was this: “There are no guarantees in life.” That is what my Doctors had told us repeatedly during the early stages of hospitalization. Though their dire predictions didn’t come completely true in a medical sense, their words did have a ring of truth for other areas of life.

All of a sudden, the plans and dreams we had established for our future had changed and we did, in fact, realize that there are no guarantees in life.

We agreed that it would not be wise to live without any plans. However, our new awareness of life’s temporal and sometimes fickle nature, led us to the conclusion that if there were things we wanted to do in life and could in fact do them, we should. Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today. That adage holds true for work and necessary deadlines. It also holds true for other areas of life as well.

The summer following the accident, we decided we would celebrate our 25th anniversary with the trip and romantic getaway we had not gotten the year before. I booked us a cottage on Orcas Island; a beautiful gem of an island located northwest of Seattle in the San Juan Islands. From our private deck – replete with a Jacuzzi for two – we let the warm jets of water wash over us and renew us. From our private aerie, we could sit and watch the sun set. About three times a day a chartered plane equipped with pontoons for water landings would arrive, bringing expectant guests to this beautiful hideaway.

But most intriguing to us was the constant parade of personal sail boats, motor cruisers and yachts. Some of these vessels were incredibly opulent; obviously owned by dot.com presidents; aerospace executives or rich celebrities. While interesting to look at and guess who might own such extravagant vessels, our real attention was drawn to some of the smaller boats. Large enough for a couple to stay aboard for several days at a time, these RV’s on the water threw us back to the early years of our marriage and our day dreams of some day owning our own boat.

While on a short expedition into the quaint town of Eastsound, we began to notice the for sale ads posted on the many bulletin boards. Many of those ads described used boats for sale. And most of these used boats were priced much more reasonably than we had ever imagined. Could we actually afford to own a boat and cruise as we had dreamed? It now seemed possible.

When we arrived back home after that trip, we began an earnest search on the Internet for smaller, used boats. We looked at several on line and in person. We even made an appointment with a broker to look at some of the vessels he had available. After looking at three or four, Judy saw “our boat.” It didn’t have a FOR SALE sign on it, but it was perfect. Royal Blue and White, its crisp canvass cover and well maintained appearance made this 25 foot Bayliner the perfect boat for us. To top it all off, the sellers were willing to part with all the accessories such as dishware, electronics, crab pots, charts and cruising books. It could not have been a better set up for us.

We named her the “Dawn Treader” after the ship in the book of the same name in C.S. Lewis’ famous “Chronicles of Narnia.” She was cozy, inviting, economical and not too big for people who had never boated before.

We couldn’t wait to take her out. We had great adventures in the Dawn Treader – some exciting, some rather scary, but most wonderful and refreshing. We were cruising through different waters. The storm waters of the previous year had ebbed away to relative tranquility and the beautiful idyllic waters of Puget Sound were our new cruising grounds.

Trips to places like Pleasant Harbor and Fair Harbor, Orcas Island, Jarrell Cove and Port Townsend had all seemed so exotic and far off. Now they were within reach. At times, as we would almost feel we needed to be pinched to assure us we were not living in a dream.

Two years later, on Judy’s 50th birthday, we were staying on the Dawn Treader awaiting the arrival of our children and grandchildren. They were coming to surprise Judy for this momentous occasion. Their flight was late so I had to stall. I had told Judy we would go out for a day long cruise and she couldn’t understand why I, the one who normally was so eager to get out on the water, wanted to hang around the marina for no apparent reason.

In doing so, however, we found our second, perfect boat: A 33’ Cruisers Inc. It had more space, twin engines, was well equipped and was still warm and inviting. Rather impulsively we sold our beloved “DAWN TREADER” and began a new phase of boating with “SEA QUILL.”

For three wonderful years we enjoyed many wonderful cruises on her. Some were punctuated with mechanical problems, but with twin engines, we found we could always get to safe port, even if one engine overheated or quit on us.

We went to Canada’s Gulf Islands, the San Juan Islands, Hood Canal, Fair Harbor, Downtown Seattle’s Bell Harbor and many other beautiful spots. Because we believed this was God’s gift of grace to us we often took friends out with us. We wanted to share the blessings of our lives with those we cared about. Though we sometimes encountered stormy weather and rough seas, our cruising was, for the most part, “smooth sailing.”

There are lots of jokes about boats. Two that we often heard were:
“Do you know the two happiest days of a boater’s life? The day he/she buys a boat and the day he/she sells it.”

“A boat is a hole in the ocean into which a boat owner throws money.”

A friend has a plaque in his office that says, “Boating is a life time of pleasure interrupted by a few moments of sheer terror.”

None of those jokes or statements has really been true for us. We love the boating life whether we are anchored out in a secluded cove watching fireworks over the water on the 4th of July, lazily trolling past Pt. Defiance and the Clay banks looking for the elusive Blackmouth or King Salmon; tied up at a dock in a cute, touristy town or sitting serenely in some peaceful harbor or decorating her to join in the Christmas ship parade that are customary around the Puget Sound. We love cruising through narrow passages admiring cliff top homes and beach front cottages. It is fun to watch for Bald Eagles, Harbor Seals, even the occasional Dahl’s porpoise or Orca whale that ventures into Puget Sound from time to time.

The gentle motion of the water slapping against the side of the boat at night brings deep, peaceful sleep. The steady drone of the marine engines turning big props is mesmerizing. The challenge of plotting a course –whether on a paper chart or an electronic GPS-enhanced chart plotter – adds to the experience. Food tastes best when it is cooked in our small galley or on our small propane barbecue grill that sits on the back deck of the boat.

We have met the friendliest and most helpful people in our boating experiences. There is a camaraderie or fellowship between total strangers; knit together only by the common experience of boating adventures.

We don’t know what the days, months and years ahead will hold for us. Perhaps more violent storms will assail us. I can only assume that to be true. But for now, we are focusing on the smooth waters that God gives to us.

The writer of Lamentations wrote “Thy mercies are fresh, they are new every morning (Lamentations 3:23) That verse became the basis for our favorite hymn of faith “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as thou hast been thou forever will be
Great is thy faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see, All I have needed thy hand has provided, great is thy faithfulness O Lord to me.”

As we cruise, I am often reminded of that hymn. God has indeed been faithful to us. We are ever indebted to the Lord for the remarkable work of healing done following the accident. But even more, we are grateful for the little, everyday blessings that once we had overlooked or taken for granted and which now, we appreciate more than ever.