Tragedy Averted

It seems easy to say now, but we had a really close call yesterday. In hindsight, it seems scarier than it did while in the situation, but I thank God everything is ok.

The whole Grogan clan all decided that we would head down to Coronado Island and enjoy a few hours at the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful day, 76 degrees, a nice breeze blowing in off the ocean. It doesn't get much better than that.

At first, Reghan was very apprehensive about the sand and the water. It took her a good hour before she would walk on the sand. After that, she moved onto the ocean. At first she didn't even like the little bit of water that came rushing up the beach. Finally I convinced her that if she held onto me, we could walk out into the water and enjoy some waves. A decision I would later regret.

At first things were going great. The water was cold, so there was a shocked reaction from Reghan and myself. The water was just below my waist and when the waves would crash in they would be about my stomach level. So we were having a blast as the water came crashing in. After about 5 minutes, as the tide was coming in, I guess i didn't realize that the water was getting a little deeper and the waves were getting a little bigger. A wave came that it crashed in about my upper chest, I thought whew that was close, but I was prepared for the next. The looked up to see the next wave coming in and it was about the height of my head. My natural reaction was to jump to keep my head and Reghan's head above the wave. That was when a few things happened.

A week earlier I had torn my quad muscle which still at this point is limiting some of my mobility with my right leg. As I jumped, I felt the muscle pull and at the same moment the wave came crashing down and the strong undertow was too much for me to keep my balance. Reghan and I both plunged under the water.

People say at times your life can flash before your eyes, well for me, I daughters life flashed before my eyes. When we went down, I was still holding Reghan and because of the waves crashing on my I couldn't stand back up unless I let go of Reghan. It is amazing to think how fast our minds can process and problem solve in fractions of seconds. I knew if I didn't let go of my daughter I would not be able to pull us both up. So for a brief moment I loosened my grip, pushed myself up, and reached for my daughter I grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her up by her leg out of the water. We were maybe underwater a total of 3 to 5 seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime.

Later that night, as I was sitting in The Phantom of the Opera at the Civic Center in downtown San Diego I reflected back on the event. Tears came to my eyes as I thought about the possibility of losing my only daughter. With the waves crashing down, and the undertow pulling out it would have been very easy to have Reghan get pulled under. But tragedy was averted, I was able to pull her out. Needless to say, Reghan was not happy, and as we were later walking back to the car, Reghan looked at me and said "Dad, I don't ever want to go back there again." As tears flooded in, I just smiled. Even cuter than that, was the fact that as I get knocked over, my hat came off my head and I lost my brand new glasses in the ocean. And whole time after that, Reghan was so concerned that I had lost my glasses and couldn't find them. It made her sad that I had lost my glasses.

I actually have a lot of spiritual application that I received because of this event, but I will save it for later. At this very moment, we are getting ready to drive to DisneyLand for the day. I am glad I have my daughter with me to enjoy it.