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We finally saw Alaska this year. Along with my husband Charlie and some good friends we fished for salmon, hiked through the Pacific rain forest and traveled by skiff along the Inside Passage.
The highlight of our trip was the Mendenhall Glacier. We drove to a lookout point for our first view. Surrounded by a placid lake, the glacier flows out of the mountains, empties into the lake and looms majestically from the water. Large icebergs that have “calved” from glacier float in the icy lake. It was a vivid, translucent blue. “Glacier blue” didn’t originate with the ’69 Camero. It originated in the mind of God when He painted a glacier.
We were up for adventure, so some friends introduced us to Debbie Douglass, a kayak instructor and guide. Debbie agreed to loan us a kayak and lead us out on the lake for a close-up look at the glacier … after taking us through safety tips. She had my rapt attention with her first statement: “If your kayak tips over, you have about 15 minutes before hypothermia sets in.” The survival procedures she went through are still a blur — something about turning my kayak right-side-up as quickly as possible, then hoisting my belly up on the kayak, swinging my legs (with my hiking boots on) around, and then getting myself back into that tiny hole. As a final step I was to use the handy manual pump to extract the water from inside my kayak. Dragging my kayak down to the water’s edge, all I could think was Fawn, you’re going to die.
Charlie sat up front in our two-person kayak so he could get good photos. I back in back so I could control the rudder. We both paddled. I was content to paddle smooth and slow. Charlie paddled like we were contestants in The Amazing Race. Every time he pulled back on the oar, the kayak rocked.
“Sweetheart,” I called, “Would you please not rock the boat? I’m a little frightened back here.”
He tried, but was focused on the scenery and his camera. I was focused on keeping the kayak upright. It rhythmically tipped to the right and then the left every time his oar hit the water. As we got further from shore and started passing between icebergs, I found it hard to breathe. My gentle reminders to Charlie soon turned to furious outbursts. He kept shooting pictures, jerking the oars and tipping the kayak.
Our guide had warned us to keep our distance from the icebergs with this cheerful thought: “They can roll over and pull your kayak in.” Charlie wanted a closer shot of the birds sitting on the iceberg and twisted around (making the kayak dip sideways) to say, “Get in closer to the iceberg!” I turned the rudder slightly in that direction, but he urged, “More!” He had stopped paddling to dig into his gear for a different camera lens. When the kayak took a big dip to the right then the left, I yelled back, “NO. I’m not going closer. AND STOP ROCKING THIS KAYAK!”
As my voice carried over the water, my own panicked words came back to me. I had a decision to make. I could scream at Charlie for the next hour and miss the adventure of a lifetime, or I could relax and trust the Lord. I remembered one of my sessions from Keep a Smile On Your Faith™ that Debi and I teach: “Keep your eyes on the Who.”
Until now, my eyes had been drilling a laser through the rain coat on Charlie’s back. I took a deep breath, and thought, “Lord, You are sovereign over this kayak and You are in this boat with us. You are omnipotent; all-powerful to protect; merciful and faithful. And as I exhaled in faith, lifting my eyes to heaven, I added (with not a little bit of drama from the book of Esther), “If I perish, I perish.”
As our kayak continued rocking and tipping its way across the lake, Charlie took photographs, including the one at the top of this blog. And me? I turned my attention to the creative majesty of God, who carves and paints a glacier and then floats out with me to admire it.
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