Rowing Against the Storm

If you’re continually rowing against the waves, it’s time to examine where your trust lies.

A small boat in a coming storm. Photo by Jorgen Haland on Unsplash

Have you ever had one of those days where it feels like you are in a tiny rowboat on the ocean and you’re rowing against the incoming storm and waves? Maybe it’s a month, a year, or a decade.

You’re not alone. Everybody goes through seasons where they feel like they are in the midst of the storm in a leaky rowboat, about to go under the next big wave.

Getting through the storm will depend on what you’re relying on when the waves seem most enormous.

If you’re relying on your own strength, courage, intelligence, or boating skills, you may as well sink under the waves right now.

What if there was a way to overcome the storm nearly every time and find yourself on calm seas? Would you grasp at that straw? Or will you continue to let pride get in the way of a rescue story?

That’s the decision I had to face several years ago. I’d like to be able to tell you I submitted right away and found myself getting through one of the worst storms I had ever faced in life. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to grasp the one thing that could have pulled me out of that storm and many others to follow.

This is one of those cases where it’s okay to not be like Mike.

Learning Valuable Lessons From the Storm

The storms of life can be frightening. Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

One of my favorite stories from childhood days in a Catholic school is where I learned about the storms that would still come my way.

Jesus of Nazareth had chosen several men and women to follow him. As they followed him, they saw him do many miracles. Heal people, turn little food into a bountiful feast, and cast out demons were among the miracles he did with them.

One day as the story goes, Jesus had spent the entire day teaching hundreds of people. As it grew dark, he told his followers he would like to cross over to the other side of the lake.

Many of his followers were fishermen, so going out on the waters at night wasn’t uncommon or frightening to them. However, as Jesus calmly slept in the stern of the boat, a ferocious storm arose. Violent winds and waves crashed into the tiny boat until it was nearly swamped.

Picking up the story in Mark 4:39 of the Passion Translation, his followers shook him awake, saying, “Teacher, don’t you even care that we are all about to die!” Jesus wakes up, speaks to the storm and the sea, and the water became perfectly calm.

This story has stuck with me for almost fifty years because, in life, I have had many storms to face. Quite often, the storm has been caused by an action or reaction I took in response to a difficulty I faced.

When I grow frustrated with the storms overwhelming me, I picture this tiny boat bobbing in ferocious waves and winds that would have torn away the sails had these men raised them. There is no way any of those men have the strength to row against the waves that threaten to swamp their boat and cause them to drown.

That is what it feels like when the storms come your way, and you don’t have the voice, the trust, or the authority to calm them.

One of the many lessons all of us, no matter our religious faith, can take from this story of such violent winds and rain battering a tiny boat.

Four things to learn from the storms of life will take us far if we care enough to remember them.

It’s not skills, education, or knowledge that rescues us from the storm.
What you least want to do is what you should do to be rescued from the storm.
Religion cannot rescue us from the storm.
Trust and faith in something outside your own abilities is the only thing that can rescue you from the storm.

Education and Knowledge Aren’t Everything

Once upon a time, in lands far and near, graduating from high school and getting a job was a big deal. The continual pressure to graduate high school and earn a college degree that may or may not get you a well-paying job is immense today. Throw in the ridiculous amount of money one will pay for a higher education that does not equal higher pay. You have to wonder what we are doing to younger people today.

Forbes pointed out this flawed thinking in a 2014 article by Robert Farrington, “A College Degree Is The New High School Diploma.”

“One of the biggest failures impacting students is the politicization of our public school system. From a lack of consistent standards to teacher tenure to money and influence in schools, our students are graduating without the skill set needed to succeed in today’s economy.”

Millions of kids are being raised up in a system that is literally preparing them for failure. They erroneously believe they are being prepared for success.

If this isn’t rowing against the storm, then nothing else is.

Skills, Knowledge, and education will never prepare you for the storms of life. Only storms prepare you to face the storms of life. Any system that is teaching a way to be comfortable and an easy way is a false and dishonest system.

You prepare yourself for the storms that will come by having trust in something much more significant than yourself. To put your trust in any other system is to prepare your boat to be swamped in the storm.

There Is No Easy Way to Row Against the Storm

Rowing a boat is difficult and there is no easy way to do it. Photo by Clovis Casteneda on Unsplash

Barry Strauss wrote a book about life lessons learned in a scull. “Rowing Against the Current” should be required reading for anybody who believes there is an easy way through life.

If you were to have ventured out to one of the many protests conducted during the 2020 elections in the United States, a familiar chant was heard. “Fair” and other phrases meant to convey that it isn’t “fair” that some people are wealthy and others aren’t.

Millions of people lined up to yell and scream that politicians make things fair for them or pay them reparations or take from the wealthy so they could have something for free.

From religion to trusting politicians, everybody is looking for the easy way through life’s storms.

William Goodman couldn’t have phrased this any better when he wrote one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

There is no easy way. Religion can’t make life easier. Politicians certainly can’t make life easier, and anybody trying to tell you they can make life easier is selling something.

The storms of life will come, and trying to find the easy way through the storms is not possible. It’s better to build your life where you are equipped to row through and sometimes even against the storms of life.

Trust and Faith Are All You Need

To row powerfully against the storms of life, there is one thing you can do that will ensure your boat doesn’t end up getting swamped out on the waters.

Building faith and trust are relatively easy when you get right down to it.

Faith simply has complete trust in someone.

Trust believes in someone’s character, strength, or truth. It also means having confidence that the person is excellent and honest without harmful intentions.

Trust is developed as we get to know someone better. The only way to believe in someone’s character is by knowing them, and the only way to honestly know someone is to interact with them.

For myself, I built that trust in God alone. Not a religious system, not religious leaders, and not what anybody else told me about God. I simply began to interact with God through reading and spending time running in the mountains, thinking about relationships, and trusting somebody with the capability to talk to a storm and calm it.

I realized that I didn’t have what it took to speak to the storms and calm the waters, but I could get to know the one who could.

Storms still come, and often I find myself getting swamped. However, by learning to put my trust in one that I can wake up with a shout, life’s storms don’t seem to be as frightening as they once were.