Navigating the Storms of Life

Photos NOT from the fateful voyage!

Many years ago my husband  and I had plans with my then-boss, Dr. Marc Hirsh and his wife Elizabeth to cruise to a marina on Maryland’s eastern shore for our annual Labor Day weekend getaway on their 32-two-foot Bayliner.

The weather looked rather foul, but Elizabeth had checked with her brother who lives right on the Gunpowder River leading into the Chesapeake Bay, and he assured us the reports didn’t look that bad despite a hurricane that was heading northward up the coast. (We later learned he had accidentally listened to the wrong forecast!)

Even though Marc and Elizabeth were seasoned boaters,  the whitecaps on the usually calm river should have been our first clue it wasn’t a good idea to head out. We had a short two-hour cruise ahead of us, but it wasn’t long before the white caps turned into three-foot waves. The wind whipped up, and then the thunder, lightning, and rain came. At first we all laughed and enjoyed the warm rain soaking us as the boat pounded through the waves.

But then I stopped laughing and my stomach started rebelling. Elizabeth handed me a supply of Ziploc bags, which I started filling.

The waves were now five feet high and crashing clear over the top of the boat’s windshield, drenching us. It was nearly impossible for Marc to see out the rain-splattered windshield, and my husband and Elizabeth were trying to read the navigational charts and look for the numbered buoys, which would keep us in the correct channel away from large shipping vessels, shallow water, and crab pots.

We were too far out to turn back toward home, yet not sure we could make it to our planned destination.

And then it got really bad.

Marc announced that according to the boat’s compass we were headed in exactly the wrong direction: south when we should have been heading north.

We all were sure we hadn’t turned around—Elizabeth was especially positive that she would have noticed if the boat had made an about-face. From past experience I knew she usually was right whenever the two of them had a boating disagreement.

The three of us looked at Marc, waiting to see what he would do. (Well, I didn’t look long because I was busy praying there were enough Ziploc bags.)

After a long pause, Marc posed his now-famous question: “Should I trust my wife . . . or the magnetic poles of the earth?”

It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d gone with Elizabeth’s feelings because she was so adamant about them, but his scientific brain won out and Marc turned the boat 180 degrees.

Within a few moments, buoys were sighted which confirmed that we, indeed, had been going in the wrong direction despite all of us “feeling” otherwise.

The storm raging around us had distorted reality and our feelings had fallen fickle.

The same thing can happen in the storms of life. We can feel as if we’re unable to cope or that we have no hope. In those times we need a compass—something that always will steer us in the right direction.

A magnetic compass always will point you to the North Pole, and God’s Word always will point you to His unchanging truths and promises.

“The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”  Isaiah 40:8

Like Marc as he captained our boat that stormy trip, it’s your choice–and mine–whether or not to trust the magnetic poles of the earth. Life’s trials may distort reality, but there is a deeper spiritual reality that always an be trusted.

Excerpted from When God & Grief Meet. Copyright © 2009 by Lynn Eib. All rights reserved.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++