God's hand has been revealed yet again!

I just experienced the hardest 24 hours of my life. And God had His hand in every minute. So let me tell you about it...

I was having a normal day off, took care of some personal stuff and took it easy for the morning. My roommate and a couple other people decided that we wanted to take a boat to the backside of Santa Catalina Island in southern California. We were looking for some crazy waves to body surf and body board on. On the way out there we came on a huge pod of common dolphin. So I quickly put on my freediving gear and jumped in the water. Officially one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I had about eight dolphin swim about ten feet from me, and they were chatting up a storm. One even took a closer look at me to see what I was about. It was amazing! After I got in the boat, we found where they were headed. To a giant ball of fish that the birds and sea lions were getting in on. Just watching the dolphin feed on this huge ball of fish was simply incredible. Well, simply put, God's creativity and beauty was evident in all of it.

So we found a place to anchor a little farther down, on a beach with some sweet waves. Awesome beach, a lot of sand, a lot of big waves. At one point I was able to body board a wave about 30 - 40 yards into shore. It was exactly what we were looking for. As the afternoon progressed the waves got bigger. It became harder and harder to get past the surf to get back to the boat. The big sets went from 4 feet to about 6 feet in the two hours that we were there. Three of us were on the beach and one stayed in the boat. The two others I was with on the beach were having a hard time getting past the first set of breakers and it was getting dark. So I decided to go the boat by myself, because I was a stronger swimmer and more experienced with big waves. When I got there I grabbed all the ropes we had on the boat and tied them together and put a rescue float on the end. I pulled the anchor and backed up five or ten yards from the break waves. I threw the rescue float as far as I could so that the two on the beach could swim out grab it and I could pull them through the surf. I was right on the edge of the breakers, so I decided to begin to move forward. I looked back to see my roommate grab the float. As I turned around to start moving forward, a wall of water three feet above my head was coming at me. A wave that was about 7 or 8 feet tall. I immediately told my friend that was on the boat with me to hold on to something. At that point in time, five million things rushed through my mind. I was hopeless, I couldn't do anything but accept that this wave was going to crash right on top of us. I was ready to accept that Christ was going to be the next person I saw. I braced myself in a way that I would be able to push myself from the boat if I had to.

Then, like a concrete wall moving full force, it hit the boat. The initial shock from the wave was so powerful I felt the steering column attached to the bow being ripped off, and a few other things. The next thing I remember was being under the boat upside down. I shoved off and away to avoid getting rolled with the boat for another round. As I came up, immediately I began to look for everyone else. Somehow I ended up back in the boat, frantic, trying to do everything I could to try and save it. But it was full of water and barreling toward shore with every big wave. So I jumped out and helped one of my friends to shore.

From that point forward it was a lot of waiting on an inactive beach with no sign of life anywhere in the area other than the plants. We had no idea where the trails were and just ended up waiting on the beach, huddled together by a fire that we started with gas from the boat and a flare. After a lot of prayer, and waiting for about an hour and a half after the wreck, we heard a helicopter. Two actually ended up coming around the corner. I shot the flare gun and my roommate lit the stick flares. We had clearly gotten their attention and waited for someone to give us the next step. Nearly three hours later we saw a boat pulling into our area. A rescue swimmer came in and started to form a plan for us. What he came up with was, get back in the water and swim to the boat. The waves at this point were nothing short of six feet, and four to five waves were breaking at once. It was a nightmare coming to life. After a couple hours, the rescue swimmer swam my three friends to the boat, and I had to free swim on round three. It took everything inside of me to not turn around and head back to shore. We were getting pounded continuously by the waves, with only a couple seconds in between each one to take a breath. Every wave would push me back and I had to gain ground to get under the next. If I failed to get under any of them I knew I would get rolled back into shore. Bottom line, we all made it to the boat. We all had hypothermia before the boat had gotten there, so we all were freezing once we hit the deck.

Several hours later ended up back home at the camp we all work at. I went to sleep, three hours later, went to work. Of course, I couldn't sleep anyway, so I was feeling fine on the sleep front. I was beginning to feel all the pain that I couldn't feel that night. The others felt it all as well, I'm sure. Needless to say, the longest 24 hours of my life thus far.

So all that, and all I can really say is that God protected us. There is no other answer. We came to find out that the two helicopters were Navy and made a random run on the backside for no reason really. In that weather, it was a guarantee that no boats were going to pass by. God had His hand on us for sure. We left that place with nothing but sore muscles and a couple bruises, MIRACLE!

Thank you Lord for keeping us all safe, and whatever Your plan is for us, reveal it to us! I love you my Lord, Jesus Christ!