I don’t want to make it seem like all I do is work (but I do have another blog post coming up about our ministry this month), so I want to share an AWESOME story from our day off. We went out last Monday to the nearby Huanchaco beach. There were several additional teams there, so we had a great time catching up with everyone mid-month. Rosa, our resident SoCal surfer girl, was incredibly excited for the waves and several of us decided to join her surfing. We suited up and headed out – my first time on a surfboard! Everything was great for the first while – I tried to ride some waves, I fell over a lot, and we had fun. In the afternoon the tide started going out, so the waves settled down. Rosa mentioned that the waves got a little better farther down the coast, so I paddled out in search of one good wave I could ride. Being a complete novice surfer, I of course went way farther than I should have. I didn’t realize I was out of my league until I very suddenly noticed that the waves were more than just bigger – they were gigantic, and they were coming a LOT faster than any of the waves earlier. I discovered I was way out of my league when I barely had time to get back on my board before the next wave came and knocked me off, and then the REALLY big one hit. I’ve hardly ever been to the ocean, and I’d never been inside a wave before. It’s not a fun place. I was trapped in the wave, just me and my surfboard, waiting around for the wave to die down so I could get back to the surface to breathe. The board came swirling around and cracked me upside the head, and I suddenly realized that if this happened again, there was a very real chance I might drown. I headed for shore, tumbling over the waves on the way in. I managed to wash up right next to my squad leaders, Lindsey and Bethany. I waved to them and headed over to say hi, when Lindsey said, “Dude! Are you bleeding?” I put my hand up to the small bump on the top of my head where the board had hit me, and it came away covered in blood. I went immediately across the street and found a cafe where the waiter poured water over my head until the bleeding stopped. When I got back to where Lindsey and Bethany were watching my board, I noticed there were a few things wrong with it: the fins were broken (and corresponded nicely to the scrapes on my foot), there was a large dent up by the nose, a rock embedded in the fibreglass on the bottom, and a gigantic chunk was dented inward on the edge, with a huge crack running halfway across the board. We noted that the big dent also had some blood on it – when the board hit my head more than just my scalp got damaged! I can’t imagine what force that board must have hit me with to almost completely break in half, but it’s a miracle of God’s protection that I wasn’t even concussed! I wandered up the beach to find Rosa and the rest of the surfers, and the owner of the surf shop came by as well. He saw the board and started looking it over, not exactly pleased that it was coming back almost irreparable. Rosa told him, “Dude, he broke his head,” to which the guy responded, “Yeah, and he broke my board!” Fortunately there was a traveling surfer staying at the surf hostel with some medical training and equipment, so the gash on my head was fixed up without problems. The board was in much worse shape, but they didn’t charge me very much at all for the estimated repair cost (another praise! God is so good to take care of me financially.)
I had a great time surfing (and learned more by experience in those few hours than I might ever have in a full day with an instructor) and now have a pretty cool story to tell whenever someone asks about the gnarly scar on my head. The local surfers have a saying for when someone survives something crazy like a board breaking over their head – Rosa tells me it’s a sort of acknowledgment of my awesome experience – “another stripe on the tiger.” I like that. God’s been taking care of me spiritually throughout this race, and now I have some very visible proof that He’s looking out for me physically as well. More than a cool surfing scar, I now have a story to tell of God’s goodness to care for me in everything I do. Here’s hoping this tiger has some more stripes by the time I get home.*
*And, hopefully none of the rest of the stripes come with head wounds.
