When we lived in California, one of our favorite things to do was to rent a houseboat and spend a week on the lake. Several times we went to a lake in Arizona, on the Colorado River.
One of those trips, we took our daughter, son-in-law, and their two little boys. They invited their best friends to join us for the first day. We loaded a weeks worth of supplies on the houseboat, then my husband drove the houseboat while I followed them in our little boat. The rental place gave us a map of the lake, showing us where not to park the houseboat, staying away from the areas that would put us and the boat in danger if and when the monsoon rains would come though.
We found a sweet little cove, not marked as an area to avoid on the map. Setting an ‘anchor for these house boats was a process. You needed to drive two of the one inch thick by three feet long rod iron stakes in the ground at least eighteen inches to two feet deep at a thirty degree angle forming an ‘X’ to tie the anchor lines. These large ropes where hooked to the back of the boat and you were to drag the ropes onto the shore, and tie the ropes as tight as humanly possible on each side of the houseboat to keep it from moving no matter what weather or circumstances that you encountered. The guys banged the iron rods into the rocky hillside as the girls prepared lunch for everyone and found a home for all the supplies that we had brought. My husband asked me to put a strong knot on the cross of ‘X’ of the anchor ropes, so that the houseboat was secure and set for the week. We then set the anchor for the little boat closer to the end of the cove or inlet. After we set everything up, we went out on the lake, tubing, skiing, swimming, and enjoying the lake. At the end of the day, our son-in-law took their friends back to the marina in the little boat as they needed to head home. After a great day of playing and enjoying the lake, we all fell into bed, exhausted and happy.
In the middle of the night, our daughter came bounding into our room frantically yelling, ‘We’re in the middle of the ocean!’ Stunned, and not awake, we jumped out of bed, only to find it was completely dark, pouring rain, and the wind was violently whipping us around. We ran to the front of the houseboat that we had anchored to the shore, but all we could see was water with huge waves. We tried to turn on the lights on the outside of the houseboat, but none of them worked. We searched for flash lights, only to realize that we left our flashlights in the little boat. We grabbed our cell phones and tried to see what we could with the limited light of our phones. Running to the back of the boat, we realized that we were completely flipped around; the engines were banging against the shore, pounding the props into the rocks, while the front of the boat was whipping back and forth. We found that one of our anchor ropes was still secure, and was keeping us inside the cove that we had parked in. After a deep sigh of relief that we were not in the middle of the lake, much less the ocean, I frantically searched for the second anchor rope. I followed the rope from where it was attached to the back of the boat into the black rough water. I struggled to pull in the thick rope back into the boat in the wind and rain. After a short time, my son-in-law came to help me pull the rope in. To our amazement, the rod iron stakes were still tied to the end of the anchor rope, which made it very difficult, as they were dragging along the bottom of the cove while we tried to pull them back into the houseboat. We pulled the muddy bundle onto the boat and untied the iron rods from the rope. We needed to flip the front of the boat around. We decided to use that loose rope to help flip the boat around, so that the front was on the shore, not the back. As we fought the waves, the wind, the rain, we tried to see if we could see the little boat, but it was so dark, and our cell phone lights were so limited, we resigned ourselves to the fact that the little boat must have been carried away.
My husband and son-in-law took those iron ‘stakes’ up the side of the rocky hill. One would hold the light of the phone on the iron rods while the other pounded them into the rocks with a sledge hammer. After just a short while, my husband developed blisters on his palms from the sledge hammer, which popped immediately. Each time he hit the stake, a little blood would splatter on the rocks below. As they were finishing up winds calmed down and the rain stopped.
At this point, sun rise was still a few hours away, it was still pitch black, and we could not find our little boat. My husband asked me to put on a lifejacket and get into the black water to see if the boat was still moored to the anchor. I was so scared, in fact I was frozen, not by the temperature of the water, but by my unfounded fear of the unknown. Maybe there was a ‘lake monster’ out there, or snakes, or a ginormous catfish that would eat my bare feet, or maybe even Jaws daddy was out there in the lake, waiting for me! I fearfully eased into the water and began paddling over to where we had left the little boat, being sure not to make too many splashes to attract the unseen enemy in the water. When I got to the place where I thought we had left our little boat, I found nothing. I could see the cellphone lights on the houseboat and heard my husband’s voice bouncing off the water asking me to go further down the cove, to see if our boat was still in the area. As I paddled further and further away from the tiny lights, I kept telling myself that if I could find our little boat I could get out of the scary black water. After what seemed like hours, (but my husband will tell you it was thirty minutes) he called me back to the boat. He was certain that our little boat had escaped the little cove that we had parked in, and we would need to contact the lake police to see if someone had reported an unmanned vessel floating around. We all headed to bed, but none of us slept that night. As soon as the sun began to peek over the hill, we were all out, checking to see the damage that had happened during the night. We all began yelling and high fiving each other as we were so excited to find our little nineteen foot boat bobbing in the mud at the end of the cove. In the light of day, I was only too glad to jump in the water that I had feared in the darkness just a few hours before. With the anchor still attached, our boat was filthy dirty but no worse than when we had tied it off before the monsoon had come through during the night. Not only did we reset the anchor, but we found an extra iron rod that my husband banged into the rocky ground to insure our little boat stayed where we wanted.
That week we learned so many lessons. The first was that when a storm comes, because in life they will, that you have got to make sure that you are anchored. Without a strong anchor to hold you firm when that storm comes, you get tossed around in the wind and the rain. That first day we had not secured out anchor deep enough into the ground to hold us in place. When we anchor ourselves in God’s word, we need to really know what we are reading, and have a great understanding of what the Bible says. Otherwise, when those storms do come, we will get tossed around like both of our boats did that night.
“We have this hope as an anchor for our lives, safe and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain” Hebrews 6:19
We learned that the power of our God is greater than we could ever dream.
“Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty! Your decrees are very trustworthy; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.” Psalms 93:4-5
Another thing that I learned is that fear is not always rational. Although I did not share my fear of getting in the dark, cold, water with my family, in my mind ‘Nessie’s bigger brother’ from Scotland was in that water and I imagined that he was going to nibble on my toes as an appetizer and would soon swallow me whole. I allowed my imagination to get so carried away, that I was totally freaked out. This was the same water that we all enjoyed during the day, but at night, my fears took over. How many times do we allow our imagination to get the best of us. We imagine things that aren’t there, we allow things that we can’t see or that we don’t understand to scare us, then we make them big monsters in our lives, then those ‘monsters’ start to control our actions and our words.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” Deuteronomy 31:6