“Dad, please let me drive the boat,” I asked. I was 8 years old and my parents had a new boat. A 16 foot aluminum boat with a 50 horsepower motor. “Please,” I begged. And then one day my father said “yes.” As soon as he said it, my mom picked her stuff up off the cement platform that the boathouse rolled out on. She told my father he was “crazy.” (She later told me she went up in the woods to pray.) I jumped into the boat, hardly listening to my father’s instructions. The next beach over was a private beach owned by a motel. The people looked over as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

Our boat had what was called a two stick control. One stick went forward or backwards controlling the motion of the boat and the other stick was the throttle. As I put the stick forward and hit the gas all I heard was the noise of the motor. The boat swung wide and the motor grazed the cement, but I didn’t stop. My brothers told me people began to pull their children off the beach next door.

I went out to the center of the lake and began my passes. My dad wanted to see what his beautiful red boat looked like on the water and I was going to show him. A little while later I could see him waving me in. As I headed to shore I wanted to be the best. I had watched my dad many times as he pushed and pulled on the direction lever as he came to shore. I was determined to be as good and probably better.

As I approached the shore I slowed way down. My brother Larry moved into the water. This was easy. I needed to get a little closer as the wind was pushing me aside. As I reached down for the direction lever I grabbed the throttle in error and pushed it all the way down! The boat leaped up in the air as my terrified brother tried to catch it. As the boat hit him, fortunately he was thrown to the side. All 16 feet of the boat with 2 feet behind was up on the cement. I had been thrown to the floor but not hard enough to not recognize what had happened.

My brother was scratched up, the pin that held the propeller was broken and no real damage was done to the boat. My mother came down the path in tears.

Many things in our lives seem easy to do. The danger is not in the doing but in the preparation. Have I taken enough time to understand(to listen.) what I am engaging in? Do I understand that corrections may be needed for me to get safely to my destination in life?

The other part is we all “participate” in various seasons. Some of those seasons are very productive while others (Just like natural seasons of winter and fall.)

My season to drive our boat may well not have been then. As a matter of fact it might have been safer had I not driven the boat.

Life is a lot like that. There is something in the realm of grace, that we might grow as God planned. My rushing things, to please my ego, certainly did not help me then. The same desire to move out of synch with what God is doing both in the natural and the supernatural, is not healthy. Nor does it produce the fruit we may be expecting.
The next time we are tempted (Or I am.) we need to remember there are seasons that aren’t to be forced, but to be embraced.