SCUBA BIRTHDAY MIRACLE...

written on january 17th, 2018

i woke up yesterday with an upset stomach. premonition? nerves?

i would try SCUBA diving again after 4 grueling years of injuries & PT...on my 53rd birthday in Aruba.

there were 4 divers total. i had one of them take comical photos of me looking nervous; now i realize those photos were a harbinger.

a beautiful rainbow accompanied us out to the dive site. like Noah's rainbow of promise, there was mine.

since there was a 7+ earthquake in the ocean last week off the coast of Central America, & a brief but torrential downpour early am here, generally calm waters surrounding Aruba were turbulent.
still, we geared up n dove in.

I HAD DONE IT!!!

we reached the bottom there @ 60 feet. the expert dive shop owner/guide went back up leaving us down there. strange. he did it again, & then gave the signal to come up after only 10 minutes (according to my dive computer). weird.

we all came up, & the boat was NO WHERE in sight. not good. apparently the mooring line had broken & the boat was adrift @ sea. majorly horrified, the dive shop owner told us we had to start swimming to get back to land. WHAT??? land was a minimum of 10 miles away, & we'd never make it in huge swells, weighted down with all that gear on. the ocean took 2 of the divers 1 direction, & the 3 of us another.

we swam & swam & swam to sheer exhaustion.

 suddenly, i was transported back to age 16, drowning in similar conditions in Big Sur, Northern California. NOT AGAIN! i had to be resuscitated the first time, it was horrendous!

the other diver kept saying, "we're going to die!" hmmm. i thought, "NO! this time i have greater Faith, better fortitude, more trust in God." i looked up & said, "God, please help us, You can do anything but fail!"

1.5 HOURS LATER, we were getting no closer to shore, & were exhausted!

the other 2 divers had a rescue sausage  they inflated, we had nothing.

miraculously, a different dive boat spotted them. we were harder to find.  the gloom & doomer was mentioning how, not only were we going to die, but that our boat had probably capsized adrift in swells. so there would go my money, keys, clothes, & phone... wonderful! i begged God for the boat to be okay out there. we were ready to give up, spent.

one more time i said, "God, help us, i totally trust You!".

 all of a sudden, in the far distance, we saw a boat. we began screaming for help.

THEY SAW US AND PICKED US UP!!!

the captain of that boat told us(it's on video),  "it's a miracle you all survived in these conditions. finding you was like finding a needle in a haystack with the swells & the ocean's vast expanse". he said we would just have been swept to Panama & would have died along the way. he told me what a lovely birthday it was because i had now lived to tell about it.

then we had to find OUR boat, another adventure. i pleaded with God for it to not be capsized or pillaged; when we finally found it,  2 hours later, it wasn't!

the owner of the dive company said he's been diving for over 30 years with over 30,000+ dives, & had never ever had this happen.

happy birthday to me, lol!

moral of this story...

i thought i was facing the fear of getting in the water again, but God wanted to take me all the way back to the initial fear when i was 16, to show me that we grow, we mature, we can come back to the same deep-seated fears again & handle them COMPLETELY differently.

WE ARE MOVING FORWARD whether we feel it or not; there was no panic in me this time, only Trust.

if there is a God, & God is good, then NOTHING is ordinary. we are born barefoot
to constantly walk on Holy Ground. He is involved in EVERY detail of our lives.

the prisons we choose become our identities, but the prison door is always open.
what will it cost us to walk out?

i learned yesterday that, "God is not an image, but a very experiential Presence".

i no longer wish to spend too much time in the questions when the answers beg
to be walked into.

peace, love, and blessings to all,

lorna, the, grateful to be alive, well-travelled guru