Tag: should have stayed home today

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Were You AIMING for the Bridge? (Part 2 of 2)

The arrow is pointing at the pillar where the canoe got pinned.

(View Part 1 here.)

I sat in the van, more than a little worried. Remnants of a hurricane had swollen the river to a level that wasn’t safe for recreational canoe usage, which became painfully obvious on our last canoe run. Earlier in the afternoon another lifeguard and I had accompanied a group of canoers on our standard trip, but one pair of boaters somehow managed to broadside a bridge pillar. The current was so strong that it dumped the boaters and bent the canoe around the pillar. My boss, Allen, and I were on our way to retrieve the “shipwrecked” canoe, and I was a teenager that was getting less and less comfortable.

Herb, the director of the Christian conference center where I worked, was driving us upriver. The plan was that we’d get into a single canoe, paddle over to the spot where the bent canoe was still pinned against the bridge pillar, and break it loose. If it was in good enough shape, one of us would transfer to it and we’d each paddle a canoe back home. If it was too damaged for that, we’d both remain in the same canoe and tow the damaged one behind us.

We could see the pinned canoe from the boat ramp. I buckled my life jacket and climbed into the front of our canoe. Allen skipped a life jacket, but had a rescue tube (one of those big red floats that you see pool lifeguards standing around with) wedged under his seat. We shoved off and right away got swept into the bright brown water’s swift current.

The river moved so quickly that we barely had to paddle. As we approached the bridge, we started paddling backwards to slow ourselves down. We slowed down perfectly, turned so we were parallel with the pinned canoe, and gently bumped up against it. A perfect docking.

The problem was the current was moving so quickly that when it crashed against the bridge pillar and the two canoes, it pillowed up and created undercurrents that we couldn’t see or anticipate. Even though we sat completely still in relation to the shore, the water churned and frothed angrily beneath us as the river pounded the keel relentlessly. Our boat shuddered, then flipped over, dumping us both upstream.

That water was flowing hard. I didn’t even have time to be pinned against the canoe; I got dumped in and immediately got swept under the boat. I was able to get a hand onto the side of the boat, and hung onto it with one hand, and held the paddle in the other. I was laid out horizontally, completely underwater, flapping in the current like a flag on a windy day.

I had no idea where Allen was or what his status was. He had probably safely cleared everything and was downstream by now, but maybe he had managed to hang on somehow. In the event that he was still there somewhere, I needed to get into a position where we could make something happen. I needed to breathe, but if I let go, not only would I be unable to help Allen with recovering the canoe, but the attempt would be over because he’d have to abandon the recovery effort and come after me. Still horizontal underwater, I tried to do a chin-up so I could get my face out of the water enough to catch a breath and maybe see where Allen was, but the current was so strong I couldn’t do it. I think I tried again, probably with both hands this time, but it still wasn’t working. With no choice (and not knowing how long it would be before the river let me get to the surface), I let go and got flung into the current, now at the whim of the river.

Honestly, when I surfaced, I expected to see Allen downriver. When I came up though, I didn’t see him. I turned and looked upriver, but didn’t see him there, either. I couldn’t see him anywhere. The only place he could be was still with the canoe, somewhere underwater.

The current pushed me into the eddy behind the pillar, but I was about to be carried out of it. Once I left the eddy, there would be no chance of getting back upstream. Allen was in the process of drowning about 20 feet away from me; I swam with everything I had, but I barely got anywhere.

While I was still fighting to get upstream, he popped through the surface. I found out later that the strap to the rescue tube wedged under his seat had somehow wrapped around his leg, so even though he wasn’t hanging onto the canoe at all, the canoe was hanging onto him. He had been dangling by his knee at the end of a strap, batted around underwater without any way of getting air. It must’ve been his guardian angel that shook the rescue tube loose from under his seat.

Just relieved that we were both alive, my sense of humor returned. While we were still drifting downstream, I asked him “well, do you want to try again?” Thankfully he said “uh, no.” We were able to swim to shore and get out of the water, but we were down another canoe.

What would’ve happened if Allen’s rescue tube hadn’t come loose? Could I have made it far enough upstream to be able to help him at all? If it meant I would exhaust myself, what should I have done, considering I’d probably still need a good reserve of strength if we both needed to rely on me to get out of the jam we were still in? Thankfully, I didn’t have the chance to think of any of this at the time. Allen bobbed to the surface before I had time to think about it.

This event helped put things in perspective for me. In this life, there are things you can control and there are things you can’t. When you can’t handle it, God will take care of it. If the only way out of a situation is via something that’s beyond you, there’s only so much you can bring to the table, and you have to rely on Him for the rest. Life has countless opportunities for you to bear witness to the fact that you’re not in control as much as you like to think you are. Every day brings new challenges, and a lot of them need God-sized help to overcome.

It’s important to remember that if God hands you an assignment that you’re totally confident that you’ll be able to accomplish, the task just might be too small. By all means do it, but recognize that if it’s something you can handle on your own, there’s not much room for God to be glorified. On the other hand, if you get to be part of something that you could in no way have accomplished on your own, it’s harder to take the credit for it. I give all the credit to God for shaking Allen loose and granting us overall safety that day, and pray that recounting this story glorifies Him further.

(Also, hypothetically, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation with shipwrecked canoes, don’t forget to call the local fire/rescue folks and let them know that everyone’s safe and accounted for. Otherwise, someone will eventually report two canoes pinned against a bridge, the rescue team will get all kinds of excited, and then they’ll let you have an earful when they find out what actually happened and that you didn’t fill them in.)

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Were You AIMING for the Bridge? (Part 1 of 2)

Lots of rain that week…

This week’s posts took place at roughly this time one July. I got certified as a lifeguard very late in the summer when I was 15, so I didn’t get much experience actually working on duty that year. The next summer was different.

The Christian conference center where I worked not only had two pools that needed lifeguards, but it also conducted waterfront activities on the Delaware River. It had a boat that guests could use for waterskiing and tubing, but it also did a lot of “canoe runs.” A canoe run was where someone on staff drove guests a few miles upriver and dropped them off with canoes, along with a lifeguard to guide the group. This stretch of river was mostly flat, but did have a few sets of progressively choppier or rougher rapids that helped break up the monotony. Canoe runs usually occurred four or five days a week, many times twice a day. As a result, the lifeguards became very familiar with the river and where they might encounter trouble spots or submerged obstacles. They almost never went more than a few days without being on the river, except for once each summer.

There’s a week every summer where the organization’s program offerings change, and it does not offer any waterfront activities. During this particular summer’s no-river-activities week, the remnants of a hurricane blew through our area. It rained hard for a few days that week, swelling streams and tributaries locally and for miles upstream of us. The water level rose and the current quickened many times over as that water made its way into the river.

For the first canoe run of the following week, plenty of people were excited to go. Recognizing that the river had risen substantially, an extra lifeguard went on this trip. I was one of them. Things started out uneventfully, but we were still within sight of the boat ramp when something very unexpected happened.

Here’s the bridge, with the supporting pillars. The one in question is the one right over this guy’s shoulder.

Soon after the put-in point there’s a bridge that crosses the river. The bridge is built for vehicles, so its pillars are pretty solid. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I think the two men in one of the canoes were trying to get past one of the columns and got surprised by how swift the current was moving. They somehow ended up slamming broadside into the pillar. The current was so strong that the impact dumped both people into the river and the force of the water physically wrapped the canoe around the upstream side of the pillar.

With the current moving so quickly, everyone else who had not hit a bridge went flying past the site of the impact. The other lifeguard and I, still a little stunned that someone had actually run into the only thing they could have possibly hit, spun our canoe around and began paddling upstream as hard as we could, but it was all we could do to not lose any further ground to the current. Just about all of the other canoes did the same thing, but with varying degrees of success. The two guys that got dumped in the water didn’t quite know what to do, and were stuck in the eddy downstream of the pillar. Everyone paddling hard was getting tired, so we had to shout to the guys to start swimming downstream, out of the eddy, so we could reach them. They did, and we eventually reached them and placed them in two of the remaining canoes.

This all happened within sight of where we put the canoes into the water. We still had almost three miles to go! I started worrying about all kinds of things. “What are the rapids gonna look like?” “If the current’s moving this fast, is our whole group going to be able to make land if they all arrive at our destination at the same time?” “How do I tell my boss I lost a canoe?”

The rest of the trip wasn’t nearly as eventful as what I feared. The river was so high that the rapids no longer existed, and the current moved so quickly that we made it downstream in record time. It was a struggle at the end, but we were able to get everyone back on land at the right spot. After counting heads and accounting for all of the gear (minus one boat and a few paddles), it was time to go tell the boss.

You might remember Allen from an earlier post. He’s the guy that recruited me into lifeguard training. He was in charge of all the recreational activities, and he was the guy I needed to tell. Allen’s the kind of guy that usually has the same facial expression whether he’s happy, sad, conflicted, ecstatic, flabbergasted, or thinking about a baloney sandwich.

“Dude, Al! We lost a canoe! These guys hit one of the bridge pillars, the canoe wrapped around it, they got dumped out, we picked ’em up and made it back, and as far as I know, the canoe’s still there, stuck on the bridge!”

He just kind of stood there and blinked at me, digesting what he just heard. He asked me a few clarification questions, paused to think for a few moments, and then hit me with:

“Well, let’s go get it.”

Then it was my turn to stand there and blink.

I should have protested more, maybe making more of an attempt to convey the river’s strength. I was fresh off the situation…I had just been there and seen the power of the current, and how crazy high the water actually was. Allen knew the conditions were much different from what they normally were, but he hadn’t been there to witness the ease with which the river destroyed a canoe. At 16 years old, though, I wasn’t confident enough to challenge my boss and say “I’ve been there, I’ve seen it! You’ve gotta believe me!”

There’s a difference between knowing something with your mind and having experienced that same thing in person. If you follow Christ, He enables you to do things that you can’t do without Him. The Bible talks about how we’re supposed to go out and tell the world about Christ, being bold and taking steps forward when we can’t see what’s in front of us. It talks about being strong and courageous, and it even talks about how, if you’re faithful with a few things, you’ll be granted authority over more resources so you can further demonstrate your faithfulness.

Yet it’s one thing to read about and say “yeah, I know that, I’ve known that for years” and quite another to do it. Keeping your keister parked on the couch instead of being obedient is a loss for Christ’s kingdom. You, as a child of God, need not fear even when seemingly impossible and daunting obstacles stand before you. If you know that God will empower His followers to do His work, do you believe Him? Going a step further, if you know that God has charged you to do something overwhelming, are you stepping out in faith even when you can’t see what’s in front of you?

Take the next step. Step out in faith. He’s going to give you what you need to succeed in His name. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. You’ve gotta believe me!