I spent this last week on Little Talbot Island, Florida. My two brothers, one of their friends, my parents and I were camping. This place blows any beach I have ever been to out of the water. The whole week was beautiful! There was no rain, although there were a few episodes of lightning, they were more stunning than menacing, there were breathtaking sunsets every night, and the temperature during the day was more than bearable.

We brought our catamaran (it’s a little sailboat, if you don’t know what it is just look it up), and I was able to go sailing on it for the first time. We didn’t know where to put the boat between the days because there are no boat ramps near our campsite and sailing the boat to and from the boat ramp every day was out of the question so we figured we could just beach it and then go get it every day, take it out for the day and then beach it again the next day. We decided that we would just play dumb if they said anything. It was the perfect set up.

So far it seems like I might just be trying to get you to go visit but I have a reason for that. The vacation was great! No problems whatsoever until the last day. The last day of our vacation it just seemed like the bottom dropped out. Everything that could have happened all week happened that day. We decided to take the boat out of the ocean to be ready to leave the next day. I was driving our trailer with my brothers while my parents were going to try to sail the boat somewhere we could get to and take it out. The wind was strong enough to blow the catamaran farther down the beach where there was a boat ramp that we were going to try to take it out at.

Then things started going bad. My brothers and I drove to the ramp and got the car stuck in sand. There was no way of getting it out as far as I could see. Every time we tried to get it unstuck it dug itself deeper and deeper into the sand. After about twenty minutes of trying different things a family that owned a truck pulled up but didn’t have something to tow with. We didn’t have anything either but with their added efforts of pushing and the idea to deflate the tires, we finally got it out.

While we were stuck my parents were on the water trying to get to the landing. The landing was on the other side of a bridge, when my parents got closer they realized that the bridge was just about a foot shorter than the 16-foot mast of the boat. The surrounding “beach” area was made up of sharp rock walls with nowhere to beach it or get to them. They decided they needed to turn around, and while trying to do so in the cramped inlet my father sliced his foot open on one of the sharp rocks. They were getting ready to call an ambulance when my brother’s phone, the only phone they had taken with them, died. We had no way to contact them and they had no way to communicate with anyone.

Finally, they got the boat sailing again and made it back to beach that seemed to be deserted, despite a small family of three fishing and they let my parents use their phone. The beach was at the very end of the place we camped and the road we took was really a bike path that had barriers to keep people from driving down but was big enough for a car. We moved the barriers and we drove down it quickly and picked up the boat.

When we were leaving a park ranger truck followed us out. We thought they were going to pull us over for something because when he passed us he did an 180. It turned out that they were reporting us to the police. That became evident when 10 minutes later we passed a cop and he immediately turned around and pulled us over. The rangers had seen the boat all week just left on the beach and had called the cops because they didn’t know if the owner of the boat had drowned and thought we might have stolen it. The cop was very stern and tough at first but he calmed down and let us go with no consequences.

We went to the movies and while we were in the movies a huge storm hit us and hit our campsite. Our screen flaps were open on our tent. All week we had been very careful to close them every time we got out of them. All of our stuff got soaked. It continued to rain all night and during the night we discovered that all the tents except my brothers’ tent leaked. It hadn’t rained all week, we had had lovely weather and a great set up, but that last day everything bad that could have happened all week happened.

And that’s my point. Everything that could have happened all week should have but it didn’t. It all happened the last day. Right before we were supposed to leave. We got to enjoy our whole week before having to deal with the stuff that should have stopped us all week.

I think that so often we think that everything should go right when there is no reason that it should. We think that we deserve things to go the way they should, so we don’t thank God for the times that things go right but only ask him “why me?” when they go wrong. God is in control all the time in the bad and the good. This world’s default is to be bad, for things to get messed up.

He is the reason the good times happen. He is also the reason the bad times aren’t worse. It was evident that during the last day that He was making the silver lining for us. It could have rained every night but it didn’t. The fact our tents leaked lead us to the decision to throw them away which opened up a lot more space to fit things in the car. There was a road to our boat so we could get it out. The cop could have given us a ticket that would have forced us to come back down there for court. The rangers could have had our boat towed or kept us from keeping it down there. The car should have been stuck for a few hours or at least one hour instead of the 20 minutes it was stuck. People shouldn’t have been nice and helped us with the car or the phone.

When you think about the good times as blessings instead of something you are owed then when the bad come along you are able to see that God is in control in all the situations. You are able to see His blessings in everything, including the storm.