Life Lessons in a Canoe
by Kate Everson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Kate Everson
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. This book may not be reproduced. Please encourage your friends to download their own copy at smashwords.com
It is better to be happy with what you have, than unhappy with what you don’t have.
This is the life lesson that Rebekah got one day when she paddled her canoe in the river near her home. It was simple, but direct. And it rang so true.
She loved to be out in the canoe. It felt so free. The sky was alive to her and the clouds its playthings. Blackbirds chattered in the cattails and sometimes at dusk they would fly together above the marsh in unison. It was breathtaking.
Occasionally, Rebekah would see a turtle head pop up, then swim away. She had even seen a beaver in the river, its perfectly adapted body making a long trail in the water. Once she saw an otter quickly splash and dive under when it spotted her.
“I love it here,” she thought. “The river is my soul.”
She paddled in the daytime when the water was as smooth as glass, and it took little effort to move the canoe across the river. If there was a bit of a wind, she struggled a bit more, since she wasn’t really a good paddler, but she kept trying to make that J-move everybody talked about. It just didn’t work for her!
But it was all about the joy of being there, on the water underneath that perfect sky. She loved to be there at sunset, when the sky was darkening and the moon just rising in the east. But whenever she went, it was just amazing.
One night, after a satisfying paddle on the river, Rebekah was at the computer chatting with friends when she looked up and saw that everything outside her window had turned completely pink. She gasped and rose to look at the sky. It was absolutely awe-inspiring. The clouds were scattered rose-coloured across the whole sky in a spectacular display of incredible beauty.
She raced outside and tried to get to the best vantage point, the dock where she kept her canoe down the river. But by the time she got there, half of the sunset had already faded from the sky. It made her sad and a little upset.
“Why did I not get some warning?” she asked. “Some hint! A heads-up. I would have been on the water with all that pink surrounding me! It would have been so amazing!”
She had just been for a paddle and the sun was no more than a tiny bit of pink rapidly disappearing in the west. It looked like a dull sunset, so she came home. Where this amazing display suddenly came from, she had no idea. It must have been the last hurrah of a setting sun, a glimpse of glory.
Rebekah was angry at herself for having missed it. But she also blamed God.
“Why have I been deprived?” she asked. “Have I done something wrong to earn this disfavour? Is God mad at me?”
Even the next day, Rebekah could not shake off this bitterness. The sense of lack pervaded her whole being, and nothing went right. She felt awful.
She wandered around that day in a daze, not knowing what to do or how to make things right again. Surely, God knew she lived to see sunsets like that. It would have made her so happy. Now, everything she did seemed poisoned by her own mindset. The negativity creeped into everything she thought about. It was a like a poisonous dart sinking deeper and deeper into her being.
Despondent and miserable, she sat down in the living room and had a cold drink from the fridge and tried to mellow out. She needed to feel good again. She also knew that, sometimes, by clouding the mind, things become clear. It worked. Soon she started to relax. The mind wasn’t quite as angry as it had been.
But still she wanted an answer. Rebekah looked at the phone. She wanted to call God and ask Him.
She picked up the phone and said, “God, why did you not let me see that gorgeous sunset from start to finish?”
There was a dial tone, of course. But through the tone, she throught she heard the answer.
“I gave you that beautiful sunset as a gift, my child. I knew you would look up from your computer and see it out the window. I wanted to surprise you. I am so sorry you are disappointed.”
Rebekah had been so self-centred she was devastated at being left out of the whole picture. But in reality, the sunset had been a gift.
This was a life lesson for Rebekah. Be grateful for everything. Even when it seems like you don’t have enough, be grateful for what you have.
“The devil has a way of working with my mind,” she thought. “It latches onto it and make a beautiful thing seem bad.”
Next time, in all humility, she vowed not to feel entitled to anything.
“It is not mine,” she said. “It all belongs to God.”
Rebekah made one more phonecall to God that day. She had two friends who had lost family members recently, one by sickness, another in a car crash. They were both still suffering from this devastating loss and remained bitter and angry. Rebekah asked God why He had taken away these people.
His answer to her was just a dial tone, then silence. She got the message. “Be grateful for the time you had with them. The rest is not yours to claim.”
Rebekah knew that her life lesson with the sunset could not compare with what her friends had lost and the devastation of soul they experienced. But on another level, she knew it was the same lesson, just different by degree.
“I hope everyone who needs to hear this message will hear it,” Rebekah said. “Whether it is just a sunset or something more significant that has been taken from you, or never given to you, try seeing it the way God does. Whatever you have is a blessing from God. Be grateful for what you have.”
Rebekah knew that it had changed her thinking, her attitude. She would get rid of that sense of entitlement. “Nothing on earth belongs to you,” she told herself. “Be grateful for everything.”
Rebekah found a sense of deep peace in knowing this truth. She would be glad for what she had and hoped to never again despair over what she didn’t have.
“I always have more than enough,” she smiled.
That night in her diary, Rebekah wrote a letter to God.
“The depth of Your Light is infinite beyond all imaginings,” she wrote. “I know that You are here with me now, in my heart, and in the stillness and depth of my own soul. You love me more than I know.”
The next time Rebekah went out in the canoe, the lake whispered to her, the clouds sang to her and the waves lapped lovingly on her bow. It was a beautiful world.
* * The End * *