Things That I Thought This Christmas Part 1

Becki comes from a family of storytellers. The stories range from the time her grandpa stood next to Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban Dictator who was overthrown by Castro, to the time her dad was stopped at a gas station by an avid fan of his singing group that last performed in the mid 1980's ,or the time Becki sent her dad to the hospital with an errant golf swing. But there's one story I've thought a lot about this Christmas Break. It involves Sarah (Becki's sister), her father, Dale Hollow Lake, and a fishing boat.

Sarah and Becki's father were going across Dale Hollow Lake in the family fishing boat. Sarah was at the steering wheel, confidently guiding the small boat through the choppy waves of Dale Hollow Lake. Through the heart of the lake, angling the boat to avoid the brunt force of the waves and watching the shoreline to make sure she was in the channel, Sarah was in charge. She looked to the back of the boat to check her surroundings and became enraged. There was her dad, using the trolling motor to steer the boat. Suddenly, her confidence was shattered. She had never been in control. It was just an illusion with her dad guiding them all along.

It was late July when we first came to the Dominican Repulblic. Shortly after, I looked to the back of my own boat and realized that to my own disgust, I was never in control of my own boat. It took little things like sitting in a taxi cab not knowing where I was headed and standing in my classroom wondering how I would teach 21 students to realize I was not the captain of my ship. I had to learn to trust that God had a plan and was in total control.

I stood silently in the house. I looked out the kitchen window not saying a word, only thinking of everything that could be happening. I waited for the next phone call from my sister telling me how my dad was. I knew that I was not in control and I had to keep reminding myself that God had a plan. Then, I began to think of those times sitting scared to death in taxi cabs and humiliated in classrooms that first made me realize I was not in control. These were the same things that prepared me to handle this moment.