Here’s an amazing story from the OC Register today about a guy who’s life change after a terrible experience on the ocean. Part of the story and his journey included The Purpose Driven Life, which interested me. Sounds like he’s a changed man … cool stuff.

Does God make deals?

A Newport Beach lawyer thinks he does — or at least did with him. Few have come as close to death as Craig McCabe and lived to describe it; now, he personifies the spiritual quest of someone who was sure he was going to die and offered God a deal: Let me live and I will lead a better life.

Today, in a bright Newport Beach office so close to the water it feels like a boat cabin, recounting his ordeal still can reduce McCabe to tears. Not so much because he nearly died but because the experience profoundly changed his relationships with family, friends and faith.

McCabe’s life pivoted in an instant on Jan. 12 when he fell off his boat, the Heather, about three miles from the Long Beach breakwater. He was leaning over the side of the 65-foot Stephens yacht to see if lobster trap lines had caught on the boat’s stabilizer when a swell pitched the boat enough to somersault McCabe into the 58-degree water.

His boat chugged away, running onto a beach on Catalina Island three hours later. There, an off-duty harbormaster heard on the marine radio that the Heather had run aground. She knew that was McCabe’s boat and called her sister, who called McCabe’s brother Lance. It was noon and Craig McCabe, then 58, already had been in the water four hours.

His body temperature was falling.

JG