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Part 72: Where All Journeys Grow

Chapter 19: Shipwreck

V2.0 – 10/08/2025

I had a distinct sensation of floating.

I opened my eyes slowly and saw nothing but stars against a pitch-black sky. My entire body erupted in pain. I felt as if I had been slammed against a wall. Dizziness threatened me and I closed my eyes again trying to push away that feeling. I moved my arms and felt the water around me resist them. I swung my legs back and forth and felt the water stretching out forever below me. I bobbed up and down, the life vest around my chest keeping me above the surface of the waves.

I snapped my neck forward bringing my body upright in the water and stared in horror at the scene in front of me.

As the gentle waves brought me up and then down again I saw the burning wreckage of the Belleza Desafortunada scattered out across the ocean before me. It looked like the ocean itself was ablaze. I guessed that the larger portions of the ship had long sunk to the ocean’s floor. I saw charred and burning cargo containers and barrels everywhere bobbing awkwardly on the surface. It looked as though they were trying to put out the flames that were consuming them without any luck.

My memories raced back. I had been left behind by the rest of the crew as they escaped the fires on the life rafts. My own angel had held me back, but why? Why would God allow me to remain aboard a burning ship knowing full well it would explode? I was alive. I guess for that I was grateful.

I closed and opened my eyes again. Not a dream. I fought back the panic that tried to consume me. I hated open water. I couldn’t see anything beneath the waves. I didn’t know what might be lurking in the depths below me. My legs kicked at nothing. I tried to calm myself. I tried to slow my movements.

Was serving and obeying God worth all this? I hated the thought, but it was there, nonetheless.

I looked around me and saw a piece of wooden debris floating not far from me. I swam awkwardly in my life jacket toward it. I reached it and pulled myself up on it as best as I could. I clung to it for dear life wishing I could pull my whole body up on it if only to be out of the black waters.

“How are you going to rescue me from this?” I asked aloud.

Silence answered me.

I calmed myself and opened my spiritual eyes. The sky above me was filled with the Dark One’s minions flying about screaming their delight in the destruction they had wrought.

“Why are you here?” I heard the song I had come to hate so much and saw the Dark One not far off. He squatted awkwardly on a large piece of the broken and burning ship. His wings flapped to keep him upright on his bobbing perch. He pointed at me and sang louder, “Why are you here?”

I closed my eyes against his question. Why did he keep asking me that? Why? What special torment was this of his. Why did God allow him to be here? My questions had no answers.

I felt despair creeping in around me. I felt the darkness of this moment. Would I die of thirst adrift in the ocean? Was that my end? Had the Dark One won? Where was my ‘great faith’? Would I be eaten by sharks? Would some great sea monster previously undiscovered come up from the depths to swallow me whole? My imagination ran wild with the possibilities that could overtake me now.

“Why are you here?” The Dark One sang on, “Now you’re stranded in the middle of the ocean! God sure does love you! Doesn’t He? Oh… chosen one! Chosen to be fish food! Perhaps Meribah isn’t in Israel after all, perhaps it’s at the bottom of the ocean! Try swimming down to it! Surely God will help you reach Atlantis, won’t He?” He let out a cry of victorious laughter and his minions echoed his triumph.

“Apparently you haven’t been paying attention!” I screamed at him. My voice carried out over the flaming waters and out into the darkness of the night beyond.

The Dark One gave me a hideous stare.

“God hasn’t abandoned me! I’ve been paying attention, and I remind myself of God’s faithfulness to me so far! I pity you that your memory is so terrible!” I spat the words at him.

He looked at me and sang, “Well then, where is He?” He looked around mockingly searching.

“He is right here with me!” I yelled my answer and then the fight left me. I closed my eyes and rested.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The chunk of debris I lay on bobbed up and down in the waves. I had been here before a thousand times in a thousand different ways. I reminded myself of all the moments along my journey when I had found myself in the impossible circumstances. I laughed aloud with joy. This was just another moment for God to have the victory.

I listened to the crackling of the burning wreckage around me. I thought of the absurdity of it all. I had just lived through an exploding cargo ship and survived. Certainly that was nothing less that the power of God at work. I knew who I belonged to.

I began to sing an old song that I had loved ever since I was a child, “I cast all my cares on you, I lay all my burdens down at your feet, and anytime I don’t know what to do, I will cast all my cares on you.”

I opened my spiritual eyes and ears and the scene around me transformed in an instant. The Dark One and his minions fled. Angels now surrounded me illuminating the shipwreck.

They all sang with me as I worshiped God, “I cast all my cares on you, I lay all my burdens down at your feet, and anytime I don’t know what to do, I will cast all my cares on you.”

I felt as if I had stepped into heaven and the piece of broken debris had become a part of the floor at the foot of God’s Eternal Throne. I sang and sang, and the angels sang with me.

The fires of the wreckage dimmed as they each went out, expending the fuel that they consumed. I was plunged into darkness. The stars above me where the brightest I had ever seen in my entire life. I could see the curve of the galaxy. It was incredibly beautiful.

I shivered against the cold wind that blew across the ocean. I was grateful for the clothes I wore, and I was even more grateful for the heat of this climate. There wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be shipwrecked than close to the equator.

I don’t know how much time passed as I lay atop that piece of broken ship. I felt held. I felt loved. I felt protected. Did I need rescue? I felt God’s love for me so strongly. I felt His approval of my obedience. I was right where He wanted me to be.

I wondered how many other people had ever experienced the things that I experienced. I could try to tell them what I‘d been through with God, but I knew they’d never understand it until they had experienced it themselves.

Loneliness consumed me and tears formed in my eyes. I let them come and flow. I was alone but not alone. Loneliness was such a strange friend. It was a gift that few understood. I knew I was starting to understand it more.

I opened my spiritual eyes and saw that Jesus was sitting on the edge of the piece of floating debris next to me. He stared off across the ocean and kicked his feet back and forth in the waters. It tracked. Jesus and me just chilling, shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean. He was quiet and I tried to see what he was looking at.

“What do you see?” I asked Him.

He turned and looked down on me. He put his hand to my shoulder and replied, “I was seeing all that I have planned for you to do. I was seeing the faces of all the people you and I are going to draw to My Father together along your journey in this life.”

“Show me.” I asked.

And He did. I was swept away in a vision and saw face after face. I saw a group of prisoners in chains huddled around me as I spoke to them of Jesus. I saw the face of a rich man sitting at a table above me as I shared my faith with him. I saw a man leading me through a dark forest and then I saw myself sharing my faith with him next to a burning fire. I saw so many others. Too many to count. And all these things I saw in a matter of moments.

Tears poured from my eyes. The impossibility of it all. I was adrift, shipwrecked, in the middle of the ocean, how could I see any of these people now.

Jesus turned my attention back to Himself. I looked up at Him through tear-blurred eyes.

“Your ride will be here soon. Hold on a bit longer now. Hold on to me through all that comes. You’ll see what I have planned for your life.” Jesus said, then paused looking up at the stars in the sky above us. He continued, “Listen to what I say to you now. You will reach the mountain. You will climb it. You will reach Meribah, the place of the judgement stones, and there I will show you where all journeys end.”

He vanished from my awareness.

I pondered his words as I clung tightly to the piece of debris and waited for the rescue I knew would soon come.

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