We got a rare strong south swell in Ewa last week, and I am blessed with a very cool pastor who wanted to head out and surf it with me. How he would tell this story might be somewhat different, but for me it was dreadfully discouraging – a white water nightmare and total failure of me to employ any of the skills I learned over a year of surfing. In short, I got crushed, washed out, crushed again, and ended up exhausted to the point of stumbling onto the beach gasping for relief. In the whole two or so hours of this ordeal I properly rode precisely zero waves.

               My first wave attempt saw me holding on for dear life after an overhead wave pitched from reasonable to vertical in the span of a single stroke. I didn’t even think to try to stand until I was at the bottom of the wave being carried far away by the rushing white water toward the beach. When I turned around there were at least three breaks of rushing white water between me and the outside lineup. It would take almost fifteen straight minutes of paddling, duck diving, paddling, duck diving, being pushed and fighting the current before I reached my pastor with barely enough energy to sit up on my board much less try for another wave.

               Once I caught enough breath, I tried for a few other waves with various degrees of failure. Finally, another good one came through, a nice monster right that would have been so much fun to ride. I felt the wave pitch over, felt the power of it, was in a great spot, leaned in, cobra posed and dug my rail into the side of the wave, but the crashing white around me made it impossible to see. I could feel that my board was where it needed to be in the wave. It would hold me. I knew it would. But I couldn’t see, so I didn’t stand, and instead of an epic ride, it became a rollover, breath stealing, underwater hold down followed by another very long paddle out into the lineup. It was a missed opportunity not because I didn’t have the skill (I had dropped in on similar waves before), nor because I had mistimed it (it was almost perfect), but because I wanted to trust my eyes instead of all the rest of my senses. I felt I needed my eyes, like if I just had that I would be fine. I wanted certainty.

               The funniest part, is that if I had stood in that moment, my face would have come above the crashing wave, and I would have been able to see. For fear of blindness, I kept myself blind, lost the wave, and got pummeled under and came up exhausted gasping for air just in time for a second wave to crash over the top of me. Blind in the water, struggling for air, mind screaming, legs kicking for a surface that seemed to evade me – I was a wreck.

               I made my way back through the cycling waves of white which are likely the reason for the name of the beach “White Plains.” My pastor was out there, smiling, enjoying himself to a large degree, and it was both frustrating and humbling to see how immune he seemed to be to the craziness of it all. One more big wave came through that washed me out, and I didn’t have the energy to return to the lineup. I went in to shore and waited for my pastor from the safety of the beach.

               There are so many lessons I could expound upon in all of this, from the way my pastor was calm in the madness, to the idea that I should have chosen a better spot, to maybe talking about bringing a different board, or a thousand other things. What most stands out to me though is my lack of ability to stand on that one wave. I have spoken before of “missing the wave” and the sense of loss that can cause, regret and frustration, and here it was all over again a year after the first one, and I still had too much fear to stand.

               No matter how far along you come in the Christian life, there will be times when you sense that you are in over your head, unable to cope, are being crashed and crushed by pummeling waves. You may see opportunities but lack the courage to pursue them. You may desire rather to remain comfortable, to stay in the shallows. It is a profound temptation to stick only to the waves you know that you can manage and never to take the larger leaps. As I face a few very important decisions in my immediate future, this failure to stand on the good wave, despite everything in me knowing it was good, is a reminder that sometimes you just need to take the drop. As scary as it is, as crazy as it feels, as blind as you are – take the drop.

               Maybe you are thinking about a new career, the stepping out from something you thought you’d do forever. Perhaps you are struggling with the next steps of a serious relationship, whether or not to dive into marriage.  What kills me about this wave, versus previous pauses I have taken on opportunities, is that I knew this one to be good. It wasn’t so much a fear that I couldn’t stand – I knew I could. It wasn’t a fear that I would wipe out (that is always a threat and part of the fun of surfing). I think in some sense it was a fear that I would prove that I wasn’t worthy of it – prove that I had no business in the water at all. I was frightened to prove that I was a fake, not really a surfer, not really anything. I wouldn’t have articulated it that way in the moment, but as I look back I feel it in my bones. There is a sense in which every time I go out, I feel like a pretender.

               The Christian life is so much the same. How often I have fallen, failed, foibled, fumbled, and rebelled. When the bigger opportunities come up, I am worried that they will prove me false. When the deeper things of God arrive, there is a hesitation that maybe this trial, this opportunity, this blessing (and the blessings are scarier than the threats) will be the one that proves I am a Christian fraud. Perhaps this fear is heightened when around those who I know are so much farther along than I am, like my pastor, both in the waves and in the faith. The truth is that I don’t fully know myself the source of all these fears.

               The day after that whitewash nightmare, I went back to the same beach. The waves were similar, though not quite as big, and I took a similar drop. I wasn’t blinded, but the angle was just as steep, the adrenaline just as high. I committed to the drop, felt the empty air beneath me, the sudden fear that it would all go wrong, that I wasn’t cut out for this, then the board hit the ramp, I leaned, the fins caught, the rail engaged, and I hit the most beautiful bottom turn I have done to date. It rocketed me back up the face and I top turned throwing spray just as the wave closed out, and I rode the remaining white into a victorious and thankful splash.

               I still worry that I don’t belong, out in the waves, in relationships, in the Christian church, but by God’s grace I am committed to taking the drop, blind or not. Courage dies for lack of fear, so I am thankful for the fearful opportunities the Lord has given me to grow in Him.