When the River Runs Rough

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” — Isaiah 41:10, KJV

Years ago, on Mother’s Day of all days, my oldest son, Jonathon, my youngest son, David, my daughter Christina, and her husband, Curtis, decided to go rafting on the American River. We lived only a couple of miles away at the time, and the day was deceptively warm. Unfortunately, warm sunshine does not mean warm water, particularly when winter snowmelt is still rushing down from the mountains.

They had been gone perhaps an hour when I received one of those phone calls a mother never forgets. Jonathon was calling to tell me that they had all been thrown from the raft and needed help.

He and David had managed to stay together and eventually pull themselves out of the river, although they were nowhere near where they had entered and weren’t sure how to find their way back. Christina and Curtis, however, had become separated from them. The last my boys had seen, the two of them were being swept downstream, slammed into trees and other debris as they were carried along by the runoff.

Christina was also several months pregnant.

I was stone-cold numb with fear. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t move. I honestly felt incapable of functioning. We called 911, and soon a river rescue team was searching, a helicopter was overhead, and EMTs were standing by.

My boys were found first because they had managed to get themselves safely out of the river. Finding Christina and Curtis took longer, and I don’t think there are words for what that kind of waiting feels like.

Eventually, they were found. They were frightened, freezing cold, and a little banged up, but considering what they had just been through, they looked remarkably good. Christina was safe. Her unborn baby was safe. Everyone was alive.

The adventure even made the local television news and the newspapers—because, yes, we still had those back then. My children’s Mother’s Day outing became a cautionary tale for anyone else entertaining the same brilliant idea. The river was still running too high, too fast, and too cold from the winter runoff, and people were being warned to wait awhile before beginning their own rafting adventures.

But of everything that happened that day, there is one little detail I have never forgotten.

Curtis lost his car keys in the river. Since he was the one who had driven them all there, that presented a fairly obvious problem. Yet that wasn’t what bothered him most. He had also lost one of his Birkenstocks.

His father had recently bought him a new pair, and after everything that poor man had just survived, he was genuinely upset about his missing shoe. Somewhere downstream, one perfectly good Birkenstock was finishing the trip without him.

At the time it was almost comical. Looking back, though, I see something rather beautiful in it. Only a short while earlier, I didn’t know whether my daughter, her unborn baby, and her husband were alive. My sons were stranded somewhere along the river while rescue crews searched and a helicopter circled overhead. Then suddenly everyone was standing safely on dry ground, and we had the luxury of being concerned about car keys and a shoe.

Sometimes ordinary problems are evidence that the extraordinary crisis has passed.

I think that is one reason Isaiah 41:10 means so much to me. God never says we will always feel courageous when frightening things happen. That day, I certainly didn’t. Instead, He says, “I am with thee.” Then He places the responsibility where it belongs: “I will strengthen thee… I will help thee… I will uphold thee.”

There will be stretches of life when the water gets rough and all we can see is what is immediately in front of us. In those moments, the rapids can feel like the whole river, but they aren’t. The river is going to smooth out. Just get through the rapids.

I don’t mean that glibly. Sometimes getting through is hard, frightening work, and sometimes the rough water lasts much longer than we think we can bear. But there is something strengthening about remembering that turbulence is a stretch of the river, not the whole of it. When we are being tossed around, it is easy to believe that what life feels like right now is what life will always feel like. It isn’t. There is more river ahead.

That is part of what hope does for us. It doesn’t deny the rapids or pretend the current isn’t strong. It simply refuses to give the rough water more permanence than it deserves. We keep going because this stretch will not last forever.

And when simply getting through requires more strength than we have, Isaiah’s promise becomes intensely practical. “I will strengthen thee… I will help thee… I will uphold thee.” We are not being asked to overpower the current. We are being asked to keep going with the strength God supplies.

I have lived long enough to look back over more than one stretch of river that I once thought might overwhelm me. Yet here I am. Not every situation ended the way I would have chosen, and calmer water did not always look the way I expected it to look. But none of those moments remained forever at their worst. Life moved forward. The river changed.

That Mother’s Day, it changed rather quickly. The helicopter left, the rescue crews packed up, and life became wonderfully ordinary again. We had car keys to replace and, somewhere downstream, one very expensive Birkenstock making its way toward parts unknown.

There is something almost sacred about that ordinariness now. Hours earlier, I would have given anything to have my children standing safely beside me with nothing more serious to worry about than a missing shoe. By evening, that was exactly the kind of problem we were blessed enough to have.

Sometimes calmer water looks remarkably like ordinary life.

Life still has rapids. Some arrive without warning, and some seem to go on far longer than we ever imagined they would. But when I find myself in one now, I try not to let the turbulence tell me the rest of the story.

The river will change, as rivers always do. Christ will not. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).

So when the water gets rough, I don’t need enough strength for the whole river. I only need His strength for this stretch of it.

The river is going to smooth out. Just get through the rapids.

If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.

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