Paddling Towards Faith

If you missed last weeks quarterly email newsletter,  you also missed this great story.  Justine was a Sea Kayak guide for us the past few years and wrote this for us.

On the first night of most Beyond Malibu Sea Kayaking trips everyone gathers around a campfire and listens while one of the guides shares his or her life story.  Last summer my trip with Emily started the same way.  The first night I shared my story as a way to introduce myself and set a tone of intentionality, vulnerability, and community for the rest of the week.  That first night last August, I looked around the circle and every kid seemed intrigued and present.  Every kid except Emily.  Emily sat with her ipod headphones “secretly” slipped into her ears and annoyed expression resting on her face.  She clearly did not want to be there.  I immediately liked her.  Not surprisingly, Emily had the hardest trip of anyone that week, but she also had the best.

After that first night we loaded up our kayaks and set out along the mighty Jervis.  As we paddled along the coastline I found myself asking God what He had prepared for this week, and for this girl.  I paid close attention to Emily, in my head I wondered what kind of person she was.  By the way she was paddling, determined and quiet, I assumed she was strong-willed, stubborn, but also precariously independent. As I got to know her throughout the week, I realized that she was indeed all of those things… but for good reason.  She had come from a difficult family background. Her father wasn’t around, her mother was decently stable but often left her daughter to fend for herself, which left Emily to be raised largely by her emotionally abusive grandmother. I found out she worked at Dairy Queen for months just to afford this trip. She came hoping to connect to this youth group that invited her.  Emily came pretty much as a loner. She hadn’t yet developed friendships with everyone on the trip. She was guarded against their genuine love because these kids had a faith she did not. As far as Emily was concerned faith was beyond her comprehension.

I was thrilled to spend a week with brave, independent, tenaciously authentic girl.  I admit my excitement didn’t come because I felt she had “things to learn,” or because “this could be her chance to experience God.”  God works in His own time, and I trust that.  I was just so excited to spend a week with a girl that reminded me so much of myself when I was her age.  We noticed our similarities right away, and found ourselves talking every chance we could.  She admitted to me that she has gotten used to doing everything for herself for so long that she rarely accepted anyone’s help.

I am always amazed by Beyond trips, how beautiful and intentional and downright unpredictable they always end up being.  This same girl who worked so hard to get on this trip, who was excited to develop some real friendships, who had spent the first couple days opening up to me, suddenly had everything cut short.  We had stopped at a beach for the afternoon and on her way up to a waterfall she slipped and dislocated her shoulder.  This girl, Emily, had worked harder than anyone around her just to be there and suddenly she had to be whisked away to base camp, separated from group.

It took us two days to paddle to base camp, a standard campsite for this route, where we finally got to meet up with Emily. We planned to stay for just a day so we took advantage of our night with Emily and had her tell her life story. So we gathered around the campfire in the stillness of the inlet and let her speak.  When she finished, her need for this group of friends that encircled her was astonishingly clear.  We had to find a way for her to finish the trip with us.  The problem was she couldn’t use her left arm to paddle. My guide partner, her leaders, and I spent the evening and the next morning talking with the doctor going over our options and just praying.  Finally we decided to put her in a double kayak with a guide.  She obviously wouldn’t be paddling but the guide would do the work, with a little help of some towing by the stronger paddlers in the group.  The result: the girl who never relied on anyone for anything had no choice but to let people take care of her for the rest of the week.

It was beautiful, and let me tell you, Emily did not always like it.  For me it was awesome.  The experience allowed her to open up in ways that I had never seen before. I paddled her to our next campsite that first day, and she poured out every question that she’s ever had about God, parents, life, pain, friends, everything!  She couldn’t name it but she slowly began to realize that something bigger than her was going on.  She wanted a part of this Love that was so unexplainable. Still, she was afraid to trust something so unknown to her.  So we kept the dialogue open and just continued to care for her.

Emily, despite obvious difficulties, had one of the best weeks of her life.  She learned that if a loving community is worth trusting, maybe God can be looked at in a similar light.  She went home with that group feeling  love from people and from God, knowing that her life had been changed.  I have kept in touch with Emily a little bit. She still has her questions and doubts (like everyone does), but she has fallen hard into this crazy thing we call faith.  She started a dialogue with God, attends church, and was even baptized with all of her Beyond friends surrounding her.  The story of Emily reminds me how incredible Beyond trips are.  I am so thankful for the way this experience truly creates an environment that lets kids feel comfortable and safe to ask questions, to search, and to feel loved by God.  Everyday I am blown away by the ways in which God works and breathes into our lives. I’m grateful for having seen this through Emily’s story.