sunny skyz – Jimmy Macdonald, a former amateur boxer who now is a drug treatment counselor, was kayaking along the shore just north of Lake George Village when things started to go badly.
“I was meditating and taking photos and I drifted away from my family,” he told Glens Falls Living. “My wife and two stepkids had taken kayaks out, and I didn’t think I needed the life vest so I kept it in the boat.”
As he tried to make his way back, the water got choppier and he paddled harder before he tipped over and lost his paddle.
He was in about 30 feet of water, his ill-fitting life jacket coming up over his head and he was holding onto the kayak with one hand and his new $1,400 smartphone with the other.
For several exhausting minutes he kept trying to right the kayak.
“That’s when I said, ‘Alright, I think I might die today. I think this might be it.'” I prayed to my lord and savior Jesus Christ for help.”
Finish reading to find out what happened here.
h/t make mine a Mai Tai
I’ve thought about the same predicament, but mine ends with former nuns and margaritas….
Jimmy the Lord has a sense of humor and he isn’t finished with you yet. God Bless!
LOL! That was great!
You see, alanis morisette? THAT’S ironic.
shit! if i were in trouble and drowning, i wouldn’t care if my savior was the pope on a jet-ski……
…the Lord saved me from drowning in the Atlantic Ocean once.
My family and I made our first trip to Myrtle Beach some dozen years ago, and arrived in the evening at the hotel, before sunset but after the life guards had gone home for the day.
Didn’t matter,, we were excited.
None of us had ever seen an ocean before,, we were Midwestern to the core..
We parked the car, dropped our stuff hurriedly in the room, changed to suits, and ran out to the water. Ma kept wisely to the surf line with our 8 year old, but big, strong me had to see how far out he could swim to an unlimited horizon.
Idiot.
I got out past the piers a bit in the not-too-wavy ocean, waved to my tiny family, then struck out for shore. I have a goofy swimming style where I keep my head to the side in the water, so I can’t see progress.
Which is good, because when I looked up after a few minutes…I hadn’t made any.
I am not familiar enough with things oceanic to be sure, but I think I was in a rip tide. I had heard of such, but didn’t know till then what it meant.
It meant death.
I struck out again, more determinedly, for the shore.
Looked up again after some time…and it wasn’t closer.
At.
All.
I was getting kind if scared at this point, because I was getting tired, and my best stuff just wasn’t working. Still, I am nothing if not persistent and I really didn’t want my family’s first week on the beach to be spent trying to retrieve my bloated corpse from the sea, so back to futility I went, but now fully expecting to die.
And THAT is a TRULY awful feeling..
I then started to mentally apologize to my wife and son, then make my peace with God.
Who, unexpectedly, spoke back.
He told me He would strengthen me to my task, but I must swim along the beach instead of towards it. I did feel my muscles revive for a final effort, and did as He said. I kept my head in the water as is my wont, not sure where I was going but I was sure I was going where the Lord would have me.
After several minutes of this he said, “Stand Up”. No drama, no booming voice, no demands or bargains, just “Stand Up”.
Which, to my surprise, I COULD.
I was some ways down the beach where it apparently curved up, and now in water shallow enough that my shoulders were out of it. I walked on rubbery legs out to the beach, then found the strength to run back to my family on dry land, and it was hugs all around, and I praised Him then as I do now, for He was not done with me so He pulled my stupid self out if something else dumb I did yet again with nothing worse than a lesson learned.
Praise God, then and now.
I will never forget Him telling me to “Stand Up”.
So I still try my best to stand up for Him. I don’t always succeed, but I didn’t always succeed swimming back to that shore, either.
Which didn’t stop me from trying.
And succeeding when the Lord took my hand.
The Lord can guide us from any waters.
If only we can hear Him…
https://youtu.be/nl–4pJ_oeo
God Bless,
SNS
SNS, beautiful testimony. Thank God!