Adjusting to this new chapter of our lives was challenging.
After a few months of being home with our baby, I had to go back to work. Because Tom and I both worked as banquet waiters in the same hotel, we were able to organize our schedules so that one of us worked mornings and the other worked evenings. We didn’t see much of each other as we passed Noah and Timmy off to each other like little footballs; but by juggling our schedule, we were at least able to raise them without too many baby-sitters.
Every day with the boys, living so close to the beach, I watched the perfect waves breaking; and as I watched my friends paddling out into the surf, I admit that it was difficult for me. What I didn’t quite realize at the time was that God uses children to help us “die to ourselves.” I learned this in small increments, through small sacrifices and daily exercises of patience. Love motivated me to lay down my life, my personal interests for the sake of my little boys.
All new parents probably experience a shock at the way a new baby changes the old rhythm of life. In my case, understanding that I needed to put myself second or third or even last allowed me to encourage Tom to go out and get a bit of surf whenever he had a break. On occasion, when time allowed, I still went out surfing.
Now that we had a real house—and not just a shanty—I was rudely awakened to the fact that living in vans and cars had not prepared me to be much of a skilled housewife, especially when caring for a newborn baby for the first time. So I developed some quirky house-cleaning strategies that I still use today and have taught my youngsters to use as well. One can only be dubbed the infamous Laundry Basket Pick-Up.
When the house was cluttered with stuff everywhere—the sink overflowing with dishes, and clothes and baby things on the couch and floor—and someone stopped by for a visit, I’d yell out, “Just a minute!” hand the baby to Tom and grab a laundry basket. Then I’d race around the house, cramming stuff into the basket, no matter what it was, and take the overflowing basket of clutter evidence to the bathroom, stowing it behind the shower curtain. Then I’d run back and open the door to reveal a nice, well-kept living room for our guest.
Now, I can be an excellent housekeeper, but if you were to ever visit our house, you might not believe me. It seems that we’re always running out the door to chase waves, get to church, get to school or work, or head off on some wild new adventure. There’s little time to keep up with everyone’s messes, including my own!
As one kid went to two, and then three, I got so overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the clutter that I would try coming up with ways to enlist everyone’s help. When the kids were little, I came up with a way to at least get them to pick up some stuff, almost like a game. I’d tell them it was time for everyone to do a “10 pick up and put away,” and then we’d run around making a dent in the clutter. As the kids got older, I increased the number of items to “100 pick up”! Of course, when I’d announce it was time for the “100 Pick Up” game, they would wince, but we all could see the results of working together on an overwhelming situation.
To be frank, we live in a jumbled house, more often than not. Every person has to prioritize the important things in life, and for me, organizing everything and having a place for everything isn’t that super high on my list. Plus, whenever I get busy, it gets even more difficult to keep things straight.
That’s why this year I gave Tom one of his gifts a month and a half after Christmas. It wasn’t the first time I’d forgotten where I hid a Christmas present only to find it once I got around to straightening out this or that closet. It has become a family joke: The busier Mom gets, the more it can be Christmas all year round!
So much for saving money.
With two kids, we decided to move into a larger house on the riverfront in Hanalei. One vivid memory is of Tom teaching Noah how to fish for tilapia in the river. Those were great times. Our home was tiny. It was the old single-wall construction, no drywall, just painted wood. It had a rusty tin roof that made the noise of a thousand tiny drummers when it rained. We loved it there.
What we lacked in monetary wealth we had in natural beauty and a simple lifestyle that many people long for. Here’s a snapshot of our country life, Hawaiian style: Fruit “dripped” from trees; fish filled the rivers and ocean; pristine waves peeled along the point. Stepping out of our home, we could see the emerald-colored cliffs rising up into the clouds as waterfalls cascaded into the valley below. That was only one of the views; on the other side was the river as it met the turquoise ocean, surfers gracefully moving along the waves.
Because Tom and I were such water people, we made sure that our kids learned to be water babies. After all, when you live on an island, it’s a good idea to acclimate your kids to it as soon as possible. We lived in a house on the beach for two years when Noah was one to three years old. I was very concerned that his independent mind might decide to enjoy the water when I wasn’t looking. So I decided to give him a big-wave education to teach him to respect the ocean. I took him by the hand, and we stood in the shore break with the waves crashing against us. He could handle it because I was holding on to him. He never, ever went down to the water without Mom or Dad!
Noah was four years older than Timmy, and it wasn’t long before we started to get him up and standing on a surfboard in the shallow water near the pier. I was definitely a pleased mom!
Each of our kids learned to swim early. Tom and I would take them often to a friend’s pool or to the ocean. If a child has been around the water enough to the point where he enjoys it and is not fearful because of lack of familiarity, it is simple to teach him the basics of swimming. We took all of our kids to the local swim program as soon as they turned three.
Still, a parent should never stop being vigilant, because that fatherly awareness helped save Timmy’s life when he was around three-and-a-half years old. Tom and I had taken the boys to surf the ankle-slapper waves in the shallows next to the Hanalei pier. I went surfing while Tom sat in the car as Bethany slept in her car seat. The boys were sharing a surfboard while Tom, parked near the pier, watched them over a surf magazine.
After sharing the surfboard with his little brother for the better part of an hour, Noah decided that he wanted it all for himself, and he sent his little brother back to the beach. The water was shallow enough for Timmy to walk in, but a riptide had formed a few yards from the shore, racing parallel to the beach and creating a deep channel. Timmy, up to his chest in the shallow water, stepped right into it and was swept away.
Tom looked up just in time to see his youngest son hurtling toward the pier, tiny hand extended upward in a universal sign for help. Timmy, a quiet, peaceful child, never cried out as he was swept along; he just kept his head above water. Tom was already out of the car and running out onto the pier as he watched Timmy slip between the pilings and shoot out the other side toward the wide bay. Tom took off running, dived off the pier fully clothed and managed to grab Timmy just as he disappeared under water.
The church we were a part of began to grow as new people became believers and we all grew into spiritually healthy families together. God’s Word became the backbone of our lives as we were blessed with many gifted Bible teachers visiting the islands. We loved celebrating Jesus together. Going to church was never a duty; it was a passion and a natural part of our lives. When the Word of God speaks to your heart, it becomes real and personal and helps you grow close to Him and trust Him with your life.
Since all of our kids are adults now, and in particular, since Bethany’s story has gotten so much publicity, it is not uncommon for people to ask us our secret to keeping our kids from rebelling against their faith. They want to know what parenting formula we used to develop the amazing resilience Bethany showed in her comeback from tragic circumstances.
I am the first to say that it has only been by the grace of God that our kids turned out the way they have. I have a master child-rearing secret; it is called the Holy Bible. Its contents hold the greatest template to pattern our live
s after. But upon reflection, and in talking about it with Tom and the kids, I do think there were some personal things we managed to get right. They were key things that helped contribute to how our kids have turned out.
The first key is that a healthy marriage makes for healthy families. I always thought that having a good marriage was the best gift I could give to our children. The value that Tom and I place on our relationship—our commitment to one another—is an anchor. This doesn’t mean we don’t get into squabbles from time to time, and we have had some rocky patches like anyone else; but our children always understood that we were committed to one another through thick and thin.
What is the secret to making our marriage work? God’s Word! It teaches us to be slow to anger and quick to forgive. Jesus’ words and His own example teach us that unconditional love and learning to die to our own selfishness is the way to live. The Scriptures say we shouldn’t let the sun go down on our anger (see Eph. 4:26). I take seriously the idea that we must forgive each other and resolve conflict in a timely manner. Invariably this means that I have to be willing to forgive slights, whether they are perceived or real.
Another thing Tom and I managed to do was create boundaries for our kids that weren’t so tight that they felt constricted and weren’t so vague or loose that the boundaries were easily disregarded. We used God’s Word to figure out what we would and would not permit; what standards we would maintain and what things were negotiable.
For example, we had boundaries about what kind of stuff we would watch on TV, or the kind of movies we would welcome into the house. Anything that promoted evil or was built on values totally contrary to what we were trying to communicate was discouraged. It didn’t matter what other families were watching.
When the kids entered their teen years, I listened to the music they listened to as we drove to the beach. It was a great way to know the kind of music they enjoyed. The more I knew their tastes, the easier it was to find similar music for them that I knew, by my own research, had a positive message.
This actually worked pretty well because I had help from the church youth group they were a part of. It seemed that the best concerts on the island were the ones put on by the churches; so our kids naturally got attracted to music that was God-directed. Some really great rock bands formed from within the kids in the group who wanted to use their talent to honor God.
Above all, our kids understood that the boundaries we set were there because we loved them and because God loved them, and we wanted what was best for them, which is the same reason we disciplined them. “Discipline” is a word that scares a lot of people, including me, before I got to know and understand God’s Word. I am a very undisciplined person with attention deficit challenges.
Tom and I learned the basics of successful marriage and parenting from Bible studies held at our church. We learned straight from the Owner’s manual—the Holy Bible. We could trust what was being taught because it claimed to be of divine origin. There is plenty of evidence to back this claim. The 100-percent accuracy of thousands of years of prophecy and its proven fulfillment alone substantiate that the Bible could not have been written without divine inspiration and direction. The Bible teaches that Satan is alive and well and that he is the “Father of lies” (John 8:44). There is plenty of evidence on our planet and in our culture’s media and advertising to confirm what the Bible teaches about Satan.
Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Our youth are living in a time when they face monumental challenges. The Bible is not called the Book of Life for nothing; the principles for living found in God’s Word can give our children a hope and a future. But the simple fact is that children need to be given clear consequences for intentional boundary violations, like the time when I took Noah to the only Christian bookstore on the island at that time. I told Noah, who was three, that no, he could not get the card game he wanted, because I couldn’t afford it, and it was for older kids. A few minutes later, I happened to glance over and see him slipping the cards into his pocket. I couldn’t believe that my little three-year-old was stealing!
I took him right out into the hall and gave him a spanking before making him return the cards and apologize to the owner. He knew it was wrong, but in his heart he had decided that he wanted those cards more than he wanted to be obedient.
Like all parents, we had to use more creative methods to discipline our children as they grew older.
It seems that people all around you cuss without even knowing they’re doing it; but of course, cussing was not suitable for the Hamilton household. If one of the boys said a cuss word, he would get a drop of hot sauce on his tongue. To show we didn’t have a double standard, the punishment was the same for me.
I remember that at one point the kids were getting overly critical of one another, so I made a rule that before anyone in our family could say something critical or mean, he had to say 10 positive or affirming things. We live in a world where people are starved for a kind word. I hoped that by learning how to give compliments and encouragement, my children might bring life to people—just by their words of thoughtful kindness.
When one of the boys would put down or name-call his sibling or a friend, I would explain that, in a way, how he treated others is the way he also treats Christ. “I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!” (Matt. 25:40, NLT). So they had to apologize to Jesus as well as to the person they had insulted.
When the boys got rowdy on long drives to town, I’d pull over at a park or a road along the beach and let them run. This burned off a lot of energy and any aggressive edge, mellowing them out for the rest of the trip. Noah claims that I would let them get nearly to the van and then drive another quarter mile, but I think he’s imagining that!
Sometimes as parents we try to make those magical moments called “quality time” happen on demand. For the most part, quality time happens during long periods of quantity time. But what do you do when both parents have to work? More creative strategies . . . and a job that was a little different than something from 9 to 5.
I was blessed with a job delivering magazines to kiosks and stands all over the island. Tom was usually working nights and surfing during the days, so I loaded up our van with magazines and little Bethany and headed out. The boys were in school, but I could be back in time to take them all to the beach. There was no time clock for me to punch or deadline for the magazines to be delivered other than by the end of the day.
We could take a break and stop anywhere along the way to enjoy a playground, visit animals at the Humane Society or have lunch on the beach. When the kids were older and began surfing, I would deliver magazines in the summer while they would enjoy a surf session on the other side of the island. Sure, this adventure-filled delivery schedule always took a lot longer, but with the boys and even Bethany helping me load the magazine racks, the work part went by quickly.
The deeper blessing about my magazine delivery job was that it was my personal Bible and spiritual education time. If the kids stayed home with Tom, I would use my alone time to pray and worship God as I played my Christian music and learn from Bible studies on the car radio and CDs played on my car stereo. A full delivery route could take eight hours, more or less, depending on how much work I could fit in the schedule with everything else going on, namely surf.
Somewhere over the rainbow is a constant reality on Kauai! It is raining hard right now, and I am thinking about where I could go to get dry. Usually, if we are on the North Shore of Kauai, we could go to town and get dry. It can rain for weeks here, but we get used to it and learn to strategize our life around it. We save our town trips with a movie for the really bad weather days, that is, if our windshield wipers work.
We have warm, balmy, soft trade winds that come in from the southeast and push the clouds up onto the mountains above Hanalei Bay, and then the rain dumps into the valley. These are predictable and consistent rain
s, nurturing the taro and the wet-lands of the North Shore. And oh, the wet, green beautiful valleys filled with rainbows and waterfalls!
When we are really desperate to get away from the rain, we head to Polihale. This beach is the official beach, seriously, at the end of the rainbow. Hot, dry, dusty miles of bumpy road lead to the reward of a soft, sandy white beach filled with roaring dangerous surf, to our camera’s delight. Kauai is 30 miles wide by 60 miles long, and the highway is along the ocean, ending at Polihale, with the other end at Ke’e Lagoon—Ke’e being the safest place to swim and snorkel, and Polihale being the most dangerous, with rips that will sweep you off your feet in seconds.
Kauai has more bridges to cross than any place else per square foot because it has more rain, which equals more sand washing down to the ocean from more rivers and more riverbeds to create and maintain more beaches. So, if you don’t mind crossing bridges, you can enjoy the beautiful beaches; and if you look back from where you’ve come, you can see more rainbows than you have ever seen before.
Kayaking was and is an adventure we try to do every summer. A family friend told me the following story about one such kayaking trip:
“Dig . . . keep your head down!” I shouted in encouragement to my son David. He manned the front of a two-man kayak as we strained, trying to paddle directly into the wind and waves. A couple of hundred yards ahead I could catch glimpses of Tom’s and Bethany’s heads bobbing in the water by their overturned kayak. A few hundred feet to our right were the inaccessible Na Pali cliffs stretching into the distance in both directions. The wind and swell had been building fast and now surged 10 to 20 feet against the cliff face and bounced back at us. Slowly, we gained on the two figures struggling in the water ahead of us.
We had left the beachhead at Ke’e barely an hour earlier on a beautiful, calm morning. Now the wind was howling and white caps were breaking over us. Tom had shown up at our rendezvous point with a then eight-year-old Bethany and an open two-man kayak. By “open,” I mean open-hulled or “sinkable.” Also with us were Tom’s son Timmy, then 12, and my son Logan, the same age, piloting single kayaks. My 10-year-old son, David, and I rounded out the expedition in an unsinkable two-man kayak. We were off to paddle 12-plus miles and camp out for a couple of nights.
Raising A Soul Surfer Page 9