Heaven's Heartbeat - The Rescue
Hauser Lake in North Idaho looked huge through my eight-year-old eyes. The crystal-clear water gave me a view from the edge of the dock down to the bottom. I could see sunfish swimming in tight, seemingly choreographed schools below the surface, with blue, green, and orange shimmering off their sides.
The dock was long and rickety. Three older, bigger boys jostled about, daring one another to jump into the cold lake water. At that moment, they stood between me and my curious desire to see the view off the end of the dock—what the boys were calling the “deep end.”
As I inched closer to the edge of the dock to move past the boys, one of them turned and said, “Hey, you gonna jump in?” Before I could tell him I didn’t know how to swim, he pushed me off the dock and into the water with a sudden shove.
At the time, our family was nearing the end of a short vacation, our first visit to the areas that brought Dad west in 1935.
First, we drove up the Clearwater River to Pierce, Idaho, where Dad had worked as a logger after finishing three years in the Civilian Conservation Corps on the edge of Worley, Idaho.
Dad was 18 when he left his family’s parched farm, where money was scarce and there was little food to feed the family. Americans had not faced such hardship since the Civil War. Traveling West via the Milwaukee Railroad, he crossed the Rocky Mountains and arrived at Camp Peone.
Photo of Camp Peone (Worley, Idaho)
Photo of Dad at Camp Peone (standing 2nd from right)
I often listened to Dad talk with deep affection about what the CCs did to help him and his parents through the Great Depression. Every month, $28.00 was his allotment—$25.00 to his parents, and for himself, $3.00 plus three meals a day and a warm bed, all US Army style. I could tell this whole area held a memorable place in his heart. And I understood why!
The moment I plunged into the cold, deep water, the area became memorable to me, too. I sank like a rock in five or six feet of water. This experience, however, terrifying as it was, became a transformative moment in my life.
I remember struggling—fighting and flailing to reach the surface. With icy water blocking my airway, I was choking, gagging and very frightened.
Did you know that there are no less than eight Bible verses that describe drowning and the fear of drowning or water?
I think of Moses leading Israel through the Red Sea in Exodus 14—and the doomed Egyptian charioteers, pursuing from behind. I think of Matthew 8, and the fearful shouts of Jesus’ disciples, trying to wake Him in the midst of a fierce, devilish storm. “Don’t you care that we perish?!”
But my favorite is Jonah. The reluctant prophet of God wasn’t pushed off a dock into a placid lake, he was flung—chucked, hurled—by a terrified crew into a raging Mediterranean storm.
Did he sink like a rock? Probably. But not very far. Imagine his terror when he found himself descending into the maw of a monstrous fish. The word picture that comes to mind is that God gave Jonah a personal fish-shaped prayer closet. And boy, did Jonah pray (Jonah 2).
It is breathtaking how a plunge into deep water can adjust one’s perspective and attitude.
God spoke to the fish, and the creature obediently deposited a thankful Jonah on the very shore of his mission—and his second chance to obey and serve the Lord.
Water in scripture is a metaphor for chaos. I’m sure that’s what Jonah felt, and I still vividly remember the chaotic fear I experienced when that boy shoved me off the dock.
Earlier that summer, my uncle and I had watched his dog swimming. “You can swim like that, too,” he told me. “It’s called dog paddling.” He made motions with his hands cupped, rotating them to mimic a dog paddling through the water.
Somehow, in the moment, I flailed the dog’s paddling motion, mostly thrashing, as the boys stood on the dock, entertained by my antics—until my dad ran to the bank and pulled me ashore.
The boys scurried off like a pack of wolves.
I don’t know if Jonah took swimming lessons after being tossed into the deep end, but I made it a point to learn all I could after my plunge with the sunfish.
What can we say about storms, chaotic waters and plunging down (sometimes in the cold, deep end of things) into breathtaking and unexpected life circumstances?
First of all, I recommend you learn how to swim.
But most of all, remember what the Lord promises:
