The price you pay for the life you choose

I think it’s my favorite line from a movie, bonus points if you can guess the movie.

In Kauai around this time of year, the perfect conditions sometimes come together for epic surf on the east side of the island. The trade winds of Kauai blow from the east, which makes for constant surf, but it is sloppy and on-shore most of the year, which is a mixed blessing, there are always waves, they just aren’t that great.

In October, sometimes the wind shifts and blows from the west, these are called Kona winds. Combine this with a nice east swell and the reefs come alive on the east side, which was right outside my front door.

I paddled out at a spot called Kitchens, which is normally a playful wave that I didn’t surf much, but I couldn’t resist that hollow tubes that were jacking up on the sand shelf that had set up nicely from a week of pounding surf. The sudden shallow shelf causes the set waves to not really get any taller, just thicker. It was about 4 feet over-head that day with some surprising clean-up sets.

The wave was jacking up fast and steep making for nice barrels, but the sections moved fast and you could only make a few. The rest of the time you got slammed a bit, but in a nice clean barrel, you can punch out the back and get back outside. No worries right?

On the front or back end of a swell in Hawaii, the clean up set can be SIGNIFICANTLY bigger than the regular sets and this day was no exception. The good thing is that you didn’t have to paddle frantically outside when you saw the horizon light up with huge lines at kitchens because even the big ones didn’t break until they hit the same shelf.

I got hammered by a wave that I didn’t make it out of that I was fully committed to and instead of pulling out the back I pig-dogged it and lost, which washed me in a bit. I came up from the beating to hear the hoots and yells of the line up letting each other know that a big set was on the horizon. It was a moment of truth for me; ‘Do I scratch through the impact zone to the safety that is outside?’, or ‘Do i paddle my brains out to get to the beach?’

It was too late for either choice; I was smack dab in the middle of the very tight impact zone and I was going to have to take this one on the head.

I looked up at the first macker to roll at me and swam for the bottom, which was really shallow, not good. You see, when it’s deep you can get below the explosion of the wave and wait for it to pass, pop up, get a breath and do it again, no worries.

On this shallow shelf, the waves were breaking and pounding all the way to the bottom, which was filled in with sand from the long swell which was nice, since it kept me from getting too beat up by reef, but I also had nothing to hang on to.

Another aspect of a wave blowing up is the water getting so full of bubbles that you no longer float, the water is less dense and you can’t get any purchase to swim to the top. Even when you are holding on to your board it seems to take forever to float to the top.

So I had nothing going for me.

That first wave hit, and I had never been hit by a wave so hard in my life. It felt like getting punched from 11 different directions. There was no chance of hanging on to my board, which would have provided a little confidence. The best thing I could do was try and lay on the bottom, just because it was the only way for me to know which way was up. Even that didn’t work. The beating was so hard that I would just bounce off the bottom and again be tossed into total disorientation.

The clean-up set was about 12 waves deep and after about 4 of them I was expecting to be pushed out the back, which is what normally happens at a spot like this. But I was still right there in the soup taking hits, barely getting a second in between servings to get my lips above the surface to grab a little air.

Then I had a moment, 8 waves into it all. I stopped fighting. I gave up. It was the scariest moment of my life. My first child was born just weeks before. I told God; ‘I’m ready.’ It was all over, my life came down to this.

I was fully expecting to die.

It was then that the inside filled up with enough water to push me outside and into the safety of the lineup.

I took the next wave in and laid on the beach for a while. I think I paddled out twice in the next 4 months. That day gave me a fear of the ocean that I will never forget.

But do I let those wounds sideline me for ever? Was that God telling me I should be doing something else, or was He just seeing what I could handle? Or was it just another surf session?

I do know this; nothing worth while is easy. Tucking into a beautiful barrel made by God is a supernatural experience, but it comes at a price.

Being successful at anything comes at a cost. The price paid is what we must choose to accept or walk way from and do something else. I learned that day that I am not willing to die for surfing, though there are things that I would die for.

So what is the price you pay for the life you choose?