Excerpted from Michael Hyatt’s book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (Thomas Nelson, Inc.):
Five years after we were married, Gail and I went to Maui to celebrate our anniversary. On the second day, we took snorkeling lessons. We started in the swimming pool, then progressed to the coral reef next to our hotel. We loved it. It was like swimming in a huge aquarium.
Later that same day, we rented some snorkeling gear and determined that we would venture out on our own. We had discovered a new sport that we could do together.
The next morning, we ventured down to the beach. There wasn’t another soul around. It was like a scene from Blue Lagoon—pristine, tranquil, and stunning. We couldn’t wait to get into the water.
As we paddled about in the lagoon, facing down in the water, we were mesmerized by the aquatic life teeming just a few feet below us. We saw brightly colored fish, gently swaying plants, and of course, the coral reef itself—alive with activity. It was truly a wow experience.
At some point, I decided to lift my head out of the water and look around. I gasped. Caught in a riptide, we had drifted more than a mile out to sea. The shoreline looked impossibly far away. Our hotel—all the hotels—looked like toys in the distance.
I immediately shouted to Gail who, fortunately, was still just a few feet from me. She looked up, saw our predicament, and then looked at me in near panic. “Oh my gosh. What are we going to do?”
Fortunately, we had a boogie board with us, on which we had planned to place shells and other items we hoped to find on the ocean floor. We both grabbed on to it and started paddling for our lives—literally.
