Doing the best you can with what you have.

We went on a cruise this spring break to celebrate both Zack’s 50th birthday and the light at the end of the tunnel of parenting Evan.

 Our vacations tend to be blog-worthy, mostly because of Zack’s heightened sense of stranger danger and need to have things planned and my need to plan nothing and also talk to everyone around us. It’s just how it is. And we always manage to end up immersed in some kind of drama, like the time I got stung by a bee while trying to order tacos in Spanish, which I don’t speak, and didn’t have my epi-pen so we doubled down on Bendrayl to avoid a trip to the ER but because Zack needs me to plan every meal I had to pick where we went to dinner and that’s how the kids wound up eating tater tots and pancakes in a drag bar in Portland.

 I have pictures if you don’t believe me.  

 This trip drama kicked off early when a half hour into the flight from New Jersey to San Juan they asked over the speaker if there was a doctor on the plane.

 Turns out that is an actual thing they do. Who knew?

 Zack, who last worked as a paramedic firefighter right around Y2K, sprang into action. It also turns out that he was the most medically qualified on the entire flight, so remember that the next time you fly United. There was no more doctor-y doctor to be found. Anyway, he avoided a crisis, wound up caring for a woman in distress, and the kids and I had to spend three hours listening to the stewardesses flat-out fan girl over him.

Your husband is so great. I know.

 We offered him this complimentary snack box, but he said you would probably eat it.

 I will. Resentfully.

 I figured we were lucky because we had hit our drama quotient early, but I was wrong. Night two of the cruise, as we sailed from Tortula (NOT Tortuga, where Jack Sparrow is from) I was dragging the kids to the 10pm Silent Disco for late in childhood trauma when the captain announced over the ship’s PA that the Coast Guard had asked him to stop and pick up a boat of stranded migrants. He apologized for the inconvenience.

The kids and I happened to be on the deck and had front-row seats to the whole thing. We heard the whistling and screaming while the Coast Guard helicopter circled above us. Our ship swung the spotlight to land on the boat and we could see a small speedboat with people jumping up and down and waving at us. The Captain hit the horn to let the Coast Guard know he had found the boat, and the people on the stranded vessel got more excited.

 If you know me, you know that I never cry. I’m the least emotional person you will ever meet, and I likely died inside a good two decades ago. But that horn and the reaction from the little boat made me cry.

 When the horn stopped, the guy standing next to me started yelling to the people in Spanish. I am pretty sure he was telling them that they are safe now. But because I am still only on the intro level of Duolingo, it is possible that he was asking for directions or warning them about drinking the water. Either way, they responded by screaming back in Spanish, which made our whole deck start cheering for them, which made Petey – who is the only person I know who is more dead inside than I am – also start to cry.

Our ship sent a rescue boat out and we watched it do a few slow careful laps before the crew members boarded and began to move the people onto their boat. 

It turns out there were 34 people crammed on that boat, which was meant for maybe five. Two of them were children. Our Captain got back on the PA and his voice cracked as he told us we were “blessed to save 34 precious souls, including two children”.

 Later on in the week, the captain would share video of that rescue, which included crew members walking them on board, crew nurses completing medical assessments, and a newly rescued two year old boy eating fried chicken while sitting on a sleeping cot wearing fresh clean clothes, while a server paced back and forth bouncing his infant sister so their mother could eat.

Witnessing that was humbling, it was jarring, it was incredible. I write to process and started jotting things down. I also knew I had a deadline from my editor and wondered if maybe this was something I was meant to share. It’s a pretty easy connection – without Jesus we are those people….lost in the dark, fearful, not knowing if rescue is coming.

 But I can’t do it. While I understand what lost without our Savior means and how important that message is, I can’t act like I truly know what it would feel like to sit cramped in pitch darkness in the bow of a broken down boat that is carrying thirty people too many, with no food or water, holding my baby, and wondering if we are going to die out here. I don’t know what it’s like to have living conditions so poor that this was a good gamble to take.

 I do know what it’s like to wonder if what I do everyday matters. If you’ve ever known someone who worked on a cruise ship, the daily grind is relentless – constant customer service, no downtime, cramped quarters, and endless people. I keep thinking about the workers on that ship…..the “security” who spend months checking IDs to get on the boat and then suddenly was searching a stranded boat for weapons before escorting people to safety. The nurse who dealt with endless complaints about headaches and seasickness and hangovers and then was suddenly looking over a person who was severely malnourished and dehydrated. How much chicken did that cook fry before his food was eaten by a newly rescued two-year-old? How many irritated guests did the server placate before she found herself bouncing a scared baby? How much more did their daily job matter, just because of who was placed in front of them?

It's no secret that I love Esther 4:14. For the record, it was tattooed on my arm way before Esther the Comfort Dog was ever a thing. For such a time as this.

This also made me think of Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for man.” And reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s saying “do the best you can with what you have where you are. “

Doing the best you can with what you have has an incredible way of leading us to surprising new paths and perspectives. God proves over and over in the Bible that He loves to use people who are willing to do what they can with what they have…even when they don’t feel qualified.

When Moses questioned God’s big call on his life, God asked Moses to use what he had…just a stick. He used this common item to deliver half a million people out of Israel (Exodus 4:1–5).

When as a young man David passionately defended God’s glory, God enabled him to do what a whole army was too afraid to do. David faced a giant and knocked him out with what he had…just a pebble and a slingshot (1 Samuel 17:22–40).

 When Jesus and His disciples had to feed five thousand hungry people they appeared at a loss….until a little boy allowed the disciples to have his five fish and two loaves of bread. He was willing to use what he had, make his next meal available for God’s use, and believe that Jesus could do something with what little he had to give (John 6:8–10).

God not only invites us to do what we can with what we have, He requires it. In order for us to experience the fullness of what He can do in and through us, He calls for you to engage in your life.

 In Matthew 25:14–30, Jesus tells the story of a man who entrusted different levels of wealth in the form of talents to three of his servants before he planned to be absent for a time. Upon his return, the man asked for an account of those assets. He expected that while he was away, the servants would use what they had to return more to him than they’d received. The servant who had received five talents doubled his investment and now had ten. The servant who had been given two talents doubled his investment and now had four. But the man who’d been given one talent did nothing with what he had. Afraid he would screw it up, he simply sat around and waited. His master showed no sympathy for the servant’s reasoning to play it safe and hope for the best. Instead, he admonished him for refusing to try.

 We likely won’t be called to physically save anyone today. But we will be asked to work for the Lord and to do the best we can with what we have. That cook didn’t know what a comfort and joy the 50th chicken of the day that he fried would be to a small child. We don’t know the impact that the one encounter from our day to day grind will have. We have been uniquely called for this moment and we are blessed to serve!