Little Teeny Baby Faith
A few months ago, my husband and I took a quick trip to Cabo. The football season began in July last year due to an interesting lock out that most of you remember well. Despite missing mini camps due to this lockout, this season seemed l-o-n-g. Longer than ever, in fact. Although I was traveling all over the place, my hubs was in what we call ‘robot mode.’ Every day is the same as the one before, and by the end of the season you are just about sick of it. With the holidays, especially, days are filled with cold weather in the outdoor practice field, muggy weather inside the Lifetime Fitness gym (yes, an NFL team has to have a rainy day backup with no indoor facility…) many long drives to DC for charity events preparing for Christmas, and an unfortunate stack up of losses. By the end of it, we decided there was only one way to end the frenzy of the 2011-2012 football season:
Mexico.
The mini-trip was just what we needed- four days in paradise. We spent mornings taking advantage of our free breakfast, too much advantage, probably, ordering every juice on the menu and hoarding side dishes to ‘save for later’. Afternoons were spent poolside with our magazines and comic books (I trust you to figure out who was reading what…) and evenings meant trying out new places in the city as long as they were beachfront. It was fantastic. It served its entire purpose beautifully; to get me tan, to get him rested, and to get both of us relaxed…until Friday afternoon.
It is safe to say that I am not an adventure seeker. It is even safer to say that I have the same level of desire to go outside my comfort zone as a three month old child. With that said, however, I love to experience new things with my hubs. The two statements make a funny pair, because they constantly cross each other out. As I said before in my posts about our Honeymoon, with the kayaking on the ocean, swimming with sharks, climbing to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia and so on-I married a man on a mission to rid me of all fear.
On Thursday, we were laying on pool chairs, sipping pineapple juice with cold towels on our foreheads when the concierge walked up to my husband and said, “Here are the pamphlets you asked for, sir.” Oj looked at me and said “Wanna go whale watching tomorrow?” I was extatic. I of course said sure and rolled over to assure proper pigment distribution…my tan is first priority, always. As I dozed off, I heard the concierge ask if we would rather go on a tour boat or a speed boat. Oj said speed boat and wished him a great day.
Well, when the next afternoon rolled around and we were walking behind our guide to our boat, my stomach started to turn when I saw him walk up to this thing:
I was a little concerned. I had spent the last hour looking at the whale chart on the wall of the tour center, and had spent much of that hour comparing the dolphin to the larger whales on the wall. This girl can kill time. With all my newfound knowledge of whale size, I was an expert on just how enormous these humpback and gray whales are. These waters are famous for the largest of them, and we were promised this tour would get us ‘as close as possible.’ I asked the driver if maybe we could stay as far as possible-dead serious face on-and he laughed.
Well, imagine my surprise when-as I was pep-talking myself to board the boat- the driver walked right past it and continued to the edge of the dock….to this thing:
I immediately flipped, internally. And those who know me know that if I can do anything, I can flip internally better than the rest of em‘. An internal flip is a polite way to freak out to the nth degree within yourself. Suddenly questioning all skills of this 20 year experienced driver, beginning to thing this was all a scheme to get me left in the middle of the ocean, pulling up all memories of husbands leaving wives on vacations, people stranded in the middle of the ocean, and of course, letting the entire brain be taken over by this image:
The external effects are something only my husband and mom notice…I must begin to reek of fear or something. (I also shake, breathe heavy, and repeat ‘Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh’ over and over… that could be the more obvious give-away.) I looked around at the three other couples around us, all in hiking boots and wearing hats and t-shirts displaying previous adventurous accomplishments, like climbing mountains and deep sea diving. They chose this torture for pleasure! Luckily, a 75 year old woman was sitting next to me. She too had been dragged by her spouse against her will. I liked her immediately.
It took one and a half hours to get to the part of the ocean where the whales were guaranteed to be. I spent that hour and a half near tears with my eyes closed shut, repeating every single bible verse I know regarding faith. I was missing everything, content in my own brain and taking it upon myself to feel safe. When I finally felt the boat stop moving my husband told me to open my eyes and look to my right. That’s when I saw this:
My fear completely melted away. Sure, it came back when I watched these enormous creatures swim under our boat and to the other side, but the moment when I was more in awe than in fear was the moment I suppose adventurous people do this sort of thing for. It was absolutely captivating, and one of my all time favorite experiences in my life. The four hours I spent on that little raft made me realize that far too often, I wait to see something great before I have faith that God will do something great. I know in my heart that God loves me so much, and that he is protecting me, and that His will is perfect for my life. He is taking us on a journey and our job is to trust Him and grow with Him, learning more about Him as we go from point A to point B, but my faith is so small that I stay in the same place, with my eyes closed, until I arrive.
I don’t want little teeny baby faith. If I could have that Friday afternoon on the boat back, I would keep my eyes open-no matter how scared I was- the entire ride to the middle of the ocean. Because that is exactly where we grow.
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
Matthew 21:21-22
