Just go with it: A lesson from the ocean.
This past week has been the most interesting week of my life by far. First a little background.
I was raised between Indiana and Michigan. Mostly Michigan. When I was a little girl, my maternal grandparents lived just outside Chicago, Illinois in a little suburb called Hoffman Estates. Spending weeks in the summer with them was always fascinating, being able to experience Chicago and different kinds of living environments. I remember when I was young, my grandfather driving through parts of the city where homelessness and poverty run rampant. He told my sister and I, “We’re not staying here for long, but I want you girls to see that there are people in this world who live their lives in need. They don’t live like you and I. And they’re just as worthy of love as you or I.” I’ll always remember that. Always.
Other than my experiences -limited, authority-guided experiences- in Chicago, I haven’t seen much of the country. When I was a tween my dad candidated for a pastorate position in Ulysses, Kansas. (Don’t know where that is? Good, you’re with the rest of the population). We took a train instead of a plane and saw the Mississippi River from the windows and a bunch of different landscapes. The Great Plains were cool to see, as well. But I was young and didn’t know how to appreciate experiences for what they were yet.
Other than these two experiences, I haven’t been much outside Michigan, even. Just Northern Illinois, Indiana, and Western Ohio. I’ve always sworn, from the time I was a teenager, that one day I would take an epic road trip with not much cash. Do it the old-fashioned way in a car, driving everywhere to experience everything. I always assumed this road trip would be to California, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. I had never particularly wanted to live there, (only at one time when I wanted to live in San Francisco and work at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, but that’s another story), and have always admired the South. For what seems like a very long time, I have wanted to live in North Carolina.
So imagine my shock and pleasant surprise when my dad’s girlfriend’s niece asked me to drive with her down to North Carolina to see off her husband, a Lance Corporal stationed at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps Base in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Of course I said yes and jumped at the chance. A little money for food and hotel, and I was in.
We left last Monday, on Independence Day, at nighttime after all of the festivities had occurred. On the drive down, we saw fireworks along the highway and a Pringles vending machine, (a vending machine JUST for Pringles! What?!), and… mountains. One of my favorite parts of the drive was through West Virginia. Just amazing. Breathtaking. I could’ve stayed all day looking at the skyline and wondering how people conquer these divinely-created giants.
But what has really gotten me, through everything new that I’ve seen the past week, (from learning Military speak on base to having the best sweet tea EVER), is the ocean. Jacksonville isn’t too far from the Southern Atlantic Coast, and we drove the twenty-five or so miles to a little town on the coast called Emerald Isle. I even have the surf-shop hoodie to prove it. This town is the cutest little beach town a la Jersey Shore with a LOT of vacationing twentysomethings. We never got the chance to make it to the beach in daytime, always arriving at the shore a few minutes before sunset.
But it made it all that more beautiful. Underneath the stars, the waters of the ocean take on this ominous but breathtaking mystery. You can see waves crest and foam for miles. Now, as a Michigan native, I do know something about large bodies of water. The Great Lakes, particularly Lake Michigan, is one of my favorite places to spend summer days and nights. There’s something that moves inside of a human being when they see such a sight. They can’t help but to think. To ponder their own existence.
But there’s something different about the ocean. Knowing that you are standing inside of something so uncontained and unfettered and wild. I couldn’t help but to sing. God was evident in every wave that crashed into me. The stars and the moon were so clear. The water was so salty and soothing. (I was promptly informed by a friend that you’re not supposed to DRINK sea water, to which I replied that sometimes, when a wave is big enough, you really can’t help it.) As the waves crashed, I began to think of Peter. I got jealous that a man had been able to walk on something like this.
And then I begin to think metaphorically. We would see these gigantic waves which, once they reached us, were nothing more than something one might see in a wave-pool. I got frustrated. I wanted to be IN the waves, as foolish as that was. I began to walk further out, and at one point, I said, “Is this the best you got?” It was as if God heard me right there, because the waves began growing in size and frequency. I tried to stand. With most of the waves, I could maintain my ground even if it was wobbly and uncertain. But about every fifth wave, one would roar in that completely knocked me off my feet. It had no regards to the barrier standing in its way, it was coming through and either you ran… or you got knocked off your feet.
Life is like that. The waves make me wobbly and uncertain. Through most of them, I can defiantly stand my ground and continue to push forward on a given path, no matter how wrong that path may be. But every so often, a wave comes that completely knocks me off of my feet and I succumb to the water underneath me. There’s a moment of dire uncertainty as these kinds of waves begin to make their way back to the ocean and the tide pulls you along with it. At some point, my friend, who kept getting knocked off of her feet, asked me, “How do you stay up so easily?” And I said,
“After awhile, you learn to just go with it.” I had learned when to dig my feet into the sand and brace myself… and when to allow the wave to sweep me away. And through the sweeping waves, I heard a voice I haven’t heard in a long time. I heard my Jesus. He speaks through his creation. He was speaking through the waves. Saying over and over again, “Surrender.”
There is a time to stand defiantly, feet dug into the sand, braced for the wave that you can see headed your way. And then there is a time to admit that the wave will obliterate you, and to surrender to the sweeping mercy of Jesus Christ. Oh, how I have forgotten. How I have been defiant when what my Jesus was asking for was nothing more and nothing less than total surrender to his waves of mercy and grace.
