Several years ago I spent a week in Cabo san Lucas with my brother, Joe, and sister-in-law, Julie’s, family. It was the July after Dan had been killed in October; and grief was constant and heavy within me. I had no fear of death for myself and, truth be told, would have welcomed it as a relief from the unrelenting pain. I’d done years of professional grief counseling—as the counselor—but never as the griever; and there’s an indescribably far distance between the two.
Cabo’s located on the very tippy toe end of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula where dark blue Pacific waves crash to literally shake the sandy beach. Our trip coincided with the tail end of a major storm system so the wave swells were huge. We sailed, sans life jackets, in a rickety little boat completely around the furthest rocky promontory tip; but turned back when the Mexican Coast Guard’s boat followed us and bullhorn-blasted at our little boat’s captain to turn the boat around. All my pictures from that part of the trip are wave-swelled crooked.
No level horizons—inside or out.
Julie talked Joe (he, good-naturedly, said for absolutely the last time) into visiting a time-share presentation at one of the many gorgeous resorts along the coast. One of the rewards for their attending was a zip line adventure for Julie, Kinsey and me.
The first night we’d arrived had brought a torrential rainstorm with flooding down the dirt hills surrounding our hotel anchored only yards above the water. The pounding rainstorm and crashing surf made wonderfully soothing background sleeping noise.
The rain also caused some rerouting of our zip line canyon course because, or so we heard, some of the tall support poles had slipped out of place. Evidently the course finale was to traverse a criss-crossed wire platform, fall off backwards, and then rappel down the high cliff side; but instead of ending the course, it was our introduction.
I’d never rappelled before; but, if you have no fear of death, it’s a piece of cake. When I finally reached cliff bottom, the belayer holding my rope, high-fived me and asked how many times I’d done it before.
The course was likely designed for adrenaline junkies and I loved it; because I could actually feel something other than grief. It was a beautiful blistery-hot day and we had to walk some distances between some of the connections. A couple of the stopping spots had ice water available for drinking and drenching self; the extremes were exhilarating.
The very last zip-over covered a wide-stretching deep canyon containing a streambed, small cabin and some people on horseback. I don’t know how the operator of the sending platform was supposed to time the send-off of each rider—and very possibly he didn’t know either—because he sent me too soon after the man in front of me. When I arrived, the receiving operator was supposed to grab my feet and secure me. However, he was frantically unhooking the man ahead of me and couldn’t grab me too. So I began sliding backwards down the line and out over the canyon; the further I slid away, the more my weight pulled down the cable line.
Absolutely nothing I could do to help myself—so I waited.
The receiver finally unharnessed the man ahead of me, quickly buckled himself into gear; then crab-crawled, hand and feet over wire, out to rescue me. When he reached me, he wrapped his legs around mine and began pulling both of us back to the platform behind him.
I asked if I could help, but he totally ignored my words; and focused instead on getting us both to safety. Then the sender operator sent my sister-in-law, Julie, too soon right behind me and she had to be rescued; but that’s another story. All in all, it was a very good day.
The memory rushed to mind yesterday morning when I read April 18th’s entry in “Streams in the Desert”:
“I once believed that after I prayed, it was my responsibility to do everything in my power to bring about the answer.”
“We all know how difficult it is to rescue a drowning person who tries to help his rescuer, and it is equally difficult for the Lord to fight our battles for us when we insist upon trying to fight them ourselves…for our interference hinders His work.”
“He simply wanted me to wait in an attitude of praise and do only what He told me.”
Be still in the presence of the Lord,
and wait patiently for him to act.
Psalm 37:7
Amen.
