Two amateur prospectors were dredging for gold in the north fork of California’s American River. Twenty-three-year-old Mike Astle was in scuba gear, guiding a suction hose over the gravelly river bottom. His cousin, 26-year-old Dave Burgess, was on the shore maintaining the dredger.
While under the water, Mike heard a booming sound. Curious, he surfaced just in time to see a huge rock tumble down the mountain and hit Dave square in the chest.
The blow sent Dave backward into the water where the five-foot-wide boulder pinned his legs to the river bottom. He was left in a sitting position with his face three inches below the surface.
Mike quickly plunged the mouthpiece of his air tank into Dave’s mouth, but the regulator malfunctioned. Underwater, Dave could only arch helplessly toward the life-giving air so close to his face.
He thought of his wife in Sacramento, five months pregnant with their first child. In his heart, he lifted a prayer: “O God! Get me out of here!” Then he blacked out.
Mike shouted for help and men in the area responded. One of the responders was a 28-year-old Polish university professor visiting a friend in the States. He didn’t know English, but he did know underwater mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and he forced gulps of air into Dave’s lungs while other men began to pry the boulder off the legs of the unconscious man.
It took 15 minutes to clear the big rock and get Dave to shore. Two days later he left the Auburn Faith Community Hospital on crutches with his wife by his side.
Have you ever felt like you’re drowning in difficulties? The poet who wrote Psalms 42-43 felt like that. He cried out, “All your waves and breakers have swept over me.” And yet, he interrupted his miserable thoughts. “Why, my soul, are you downcast?” he asked himself. “Put your hope in God.”
The poem is a perfect model for how to handle anxiety and depression. Like the poet, we also need to be honest about our despair and yet refuse to let it define us. George Herbert (1593 –1633) put it beautifully in his little poem, “Bitter Sweet.”
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament, and love.
Are you able to maintain this perfect balance? I’ll talk about how to do that at Hillcrest this Sunday. Join us on campus or online.
--Tom
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.