It was the year we wrote the musical Kids Under Construction. We decided to travel to Puerto Rico to combine a vacation with some work time with Ron Huff: conceive the musical, create the staging, and lay out the plot. Ron and Donna, our whole family, and my mother spent a week on a lovely beach lined by palm trees and tropical flowers.
Our eight-year-old, Amy, thought Donna Huff was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. To imitate her, Amy picked fresh hibiscus blossoms to pin in her hair each evening. Benjy, a year younger, caught lizards by the tail and collected sand crabs in his plastic pail. Suzanne, at twelve, teetered between childhood and womanhood. One minute she was chasing lizards or building sand castles with Benjy; the next she was writing postcards to a boy back home.
We all knew how priceless these moments were. We memorized the sunsets, absorbed the music of the birds, and pressed exotic flowers between the pages of the books we’d brought to read. As for our work, we all wrote and talked about ideas, great and small, and used the welcome break to refresh our spirits.
One day while the children played at the water’s edge with my mother (who was always the biggest kid of all), Bill and I took a walk down the beach. It was easy to walk a long way and not think about how far you’d gone. When we realized how long we’d been away, we turned back toward the hotel. We were still quite a distance away when we saw a child running toward us, waving his arms. Soon we realized it was Benjy, urgently trying to tell us something. We ran to meet him.
“Suzanne lost her glasses in the ocean!” he yelled over the thunder of the surf. “She was picking up shells and a big wave came in and knocked off her glasses. The tide washed them out to sea!”
“How long ago?” I asked, thinking about how quickly these strong currents had been carrying things—even children—down the beach.
“About fifteen minutes ago. We’ve been looking for them ever since.”
My mind raced. A coral reef ran parallel to the shoreline about a hundred feet out. There were urgent warnings of an undertow—“Strong Currents.” Objects like sand toys or rafts caught by a wave had been carried down the beach as fast as the children could run to catch them.
By now we were shouting back and forth to Suzanne. “Where did you lose them?” I yelled.
“Right here. I was standing right here!”
She was knee-deep in water as the tide was coming in. “I can’t see a thing, Mother! What are we going to do?”
“Let’s pray,” I said and I took her two hands in mine.
Then I thought to myself, What are you doing? You’re going to ruin this kid’s faith. Those glasses have long since been pulled out to sea by the undertow, most likely smashed to bits against the coral reef. If we even find any pieces, they will have washed ashore far down the beach!
But I was too far into this to turn back. Holding Suzanne’s hands and standing knee-deep in water, I prayed: “Jesus, You know how much Suzanne needs her glasses, and that we are far from home and know no doctors here to have them replaced. We are Your children and this is Your ocean. You know where the glasses are, so we’re asking You to send them back.”
Just then Suzanne squeezed my hand and interrupted my prayer. “Mother! Something just hit my leg!” She let go of my hand, reached down into the water, and pulled out her glasses. They were in one piece and not even scratched!
We danced a jig of praise and she ran off to tell the others who were searching farther down the beach.
Much later that evening, after we’d had our dinner and the kids were ready for bed, I took out the Bible and opened it to Psalms to read something that might fit the sounds of the surf pounding the shore outside our room’s open patio doors. I chose a psalm we’d read many times, but never had we heard it as we did that night.
O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit or stand. When far away you know my every thought. You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment, you know where I am. You know what I am going to say before I even say it. You both precede and follow me, and place your hand of blessing on my head. This is too glorious, too wonderful to believe! I can never be lost to your Spirit! I can never get away from my God! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, your strength will support me. (Psalm 139:1–10 tlb)
When we had finished all of Psalm 139, we could hardly believe that God’s Word had been so specific for us… so familiar yet as new and fresh as this day’s miracle. Together we thanked God that He is a God who chose to be involved in our lives, that truly He had scheduled our days; we marveled at the truth that we couldn’t even “count how many times a day [His] thoughts turn toward [us]” (Ps. 139:18 tlb).
Psalm 139 has returned many times to visit our family. Over the years our children read it to their children. Soon after that trip Bill and I wrote the psalm into a song we called “Praise You.” It has been arranged for choirs and recorded by various artists. But it will always be for us a reminder of the day a little girl prayed with her mother on an island beach for a pair of glasses lost at sea.
