They Don't Have to Capsize Us

My husband and I took our kids canoeing for the first time today, four of us in one canoe and four of us in another, and we quickly learned that teaching kids ages 6-14 how to paddle and steer and work as a team was... uh... a TAD stressful.

Well, 20 minutes in our nearly 4-hour journey (turns out it takes awhile to go 7 miles down river), just as we were kinda getting the hang of things, I saw my husband and boys hit some rapids that led them right into a tangle of branches where, sure enough, the canoe flipped completely over, dumping them all out into the water! I hardly had time to make sure they were okay because, despite our efforts, the girls and I were headed straight to the same spot! My girls were freaking out, and as we neared the branches, I knew we couldn’t all lean to the side, so instead of trying to avoid them completely, I GRABBED those branches and used them to steady us, help control us through the rapids, and I pushed off them to get through. Oh, we had to duck and be careful not to get our eyeballs poked out, but we didn’t capsize the boat. Whew! After sliding into the same bank as the boys and calming the kids down (my youngest boy was hysterical!), we dealt with the problem at hand- a canoe full of water. We tried to tip it on our own and it was way too heavy! Then, a kind man and woman hopped out of their canoe to come help us and we got it cleared out! Then we were on our way with no further incidents. Oh, there was WAY more whining and fighting than I’d like to admit,but no one fell out of the canoes again, so #winning

I thought about it, how sometimes we are propelled toward chaos and affliction. We panic, and in the process of avoiding our trials, we lean too far and sink. Maybe sometimes we just need to GRAB the very things threatening to push us down. Face them head on! Use them for leverage! Push off of them and go where we want to go! They can poke us and scratch us, but they don’t have to capsize us. And if we fall, God is there to help us safely land, get the water out, and help us back in the boat.