I’m the third oldest of seven children. God watched out for me even before I was His child. My dad was a career Navy man and in the spring of 1966, when I was eight-years-old and the Vietnam War was going on, I got pulled out of school and my family moved to Eva Beach, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. My dad was preparing to go to Vietnam and the Navy offered to let our family stay in base housing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania or to send my mom home, whichever she preferred. My mom wanted to go home, and Hawaii was her home.
My dad traveled with us and helped us get settled before leaving for Vietnam. Not long after we moved to Hawaii, my mom took us kids swimming at Waikiki Beach. I couldn’t swim, but that didn’t stop me from venturing out into the water. The water was so shallow that I walked out farther and farther and farther. Even then, the water was only about waist deep, and it wasn’t deep enough for me, so I kept going.
Without warning, I stepped off the huge sandbar that I’d been walking on and plunged into water way over my head. I didn’t want it to be that deep.
I thought, Oops, I took one step too many. And I knew that all I had to do was step back up onto that sandbar. That sounded easy enough. It wasn’t easy. I splashed and struggled to reach that sandbar, but I didn’t know how to swim toward it. I managed to bob up to the surface long enough to catch a quick breath of air before going under again. As hard as it is to believe, I didn’t realize that I was drowning. I’m not easily panicked, and I wasn’t panicked then. I knew what I had to do – climb back onto the sandbar – and I was determined to do it. Then every time I bobbed to the surface, I took a quick breath before plunging under again.
My mother was sitting on the sand looking out over the water, trying to keep an eye on each of her children. About the time I went under for the fourth or fifth time, she said to my brother, Joel, who was about 11-years-old, “I think Marjie’s drowning. Go out there and pull her in.” (After seven kids, my mother wasn’t easily panicked, either.)
Joel waded out to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me onto the sandbar, but he didn’t let go of me. He dragged me all the way to shore and my mother made me sit down and rest. I didn’t want to rest. I wanted to go back into the water. (Only this time, I wasn’t going to wade out so far.)
At eight-years-old, I didn’t think about eternity; I only thought about the here and now. But even back then, nine years before I trusted Christ as my Savior, my Heavenly Father had sent an angel to watch over and protect me, for which I’ll always be grateful.