Raising A Soul Surfer Read Online Free PDF Page B

we have lived through so many false alarms that we were sure this one would have no impact. We have experienced so many really huge surf days that a three-foot surge among the regular waves is not going to keep us up on a hill.
    Later, sitting on the beach, I realized that God was showing me a metaphor not only for the film we were making, but also for what has happened in our lives. The event that could have been a tsunami of destruction and fear has turned out to be a wave of blessing. God has always had a plan for us, and He only used the perceived tragedy to advance His plan and embrace the world with a tsunami of love. It was the fulfillment of Jeremiah 29:11 in our lives.
    We were in the middle of God’s plan and we saw how He was using our lives to draw people to faith in Him. I could see that God has always kept us in His care. He was preparing Tom and me before we even knew Him personally and intimately.
    The event that rocked our family didn’t send out destruction; it sent out a wave of hope and love in the form of a story of triumph over adversity through our trust in God. The tsunami of God’s impact in our lives has not run out of energy. In thetelling of our story, people are still being swept off their feet by God’s love.
    Our journey to this place began long before that shark attacked Bethany. It began far away from the lush tropical beaches of Hawaii. It began with a New Jersey boy in thick square-framed glasses, and an athletic blonde California girl in San Diego.
Notes
    1. Laura Sheahen, “‘It’s All God’: Interview with Dennis Quaid,” Beliefnet. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2005/11/Its-All-God-Interview-With-Dennis-Quaid.aspx .
    2 . “Hilo Hawaii’s Noah Johnson Wins the Quicksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau,” HoloHolo Hawai’i, January 1, 1999. http://holoholo.org/quikeddy/q990101.html .

CHAPTER
2
Jersey Boy
    The L ORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O L ORD ,
endures forever—do not abandon the work of your hands
.
PSALM 138:8,
NIV
     

    Tom was 13 years old when he discovered the joy of surfing.
    Does New Jersey strike you as a likely place for a thriving surf culture? News spreads fast and even faster in the surfing world. In August 1888, the cover of a magazine called the
National Police Gazette
, a New Jersey publication, featured a female surfer riding on a wave. This piece of East Coast history is documented by Skipper Funderburg and is part of the Surfing Heritage Foundation collection.
    Fast track to 1963, when the Beach Boys had a mega hit song with “Surfing USA.” With the help of music, it seemed as if surf fever was catching on everywhere—including the barrier island resort town of Ocean City, New Jersey.
    Tom’s dad moved the family there from central New Jersey when Tom was a toddler. Tom’s dad was a dentist, and I guess he figured he could fix teeth anywhere, so it might as well be close to the beach. So Tom, the youngest, and his two brothers, Mikeand Bob, and sister Pat, found themselves in quaint and family friendly Ocean City, a small town of around 8,000 people that swelled in number every summer. When summer rolled around, Ocean City’s famous boardwalks were crowded to bursting with a great view of friendly, rideable waves.
    During that summer of 1963, the only thing that mattered to Tom and his best friend, Monk, were the waves peeling across the water off the jam-packed beach—waves that suddenly had a new meaning: Surfing!
    For most Americans, surfing was just another novelty fad like the hula-hoop or 3D movies. Surfers were daredevils riding monstrous waves in Hawaii, or hanging 10 in bikini-clad California—both faraway places from Tom and Monk’s everyday world.
    With his strong swimming background, it was a natural course of events that Tom found something to pursue outside of the pool. Of all his siblings, he was the rowdy one, the restless one, the “Trickster,” as his surf crew named him. His nickname came not