Monthly Archives: June 2016

Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, sits toward the end of the long chain of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks. Legend claims Ocracoke as the home and hideout of the infamous pirate Blackbeard, and depending who you ask, the native families are descendants of that blackguard’s crew. That would make me a descendant of that blackguard’s crew for this perfect, long stretch of sand, sea grass, and cedar was home to my maternal grandmother’s family. For me this barrier island reverberates with echoes of home.

I arrived almost three weeks ago seeking silence, solitude, peace, and recovery from the storms that thundered their ways through my life over the last months and years. I came seeking answers and hope, seeking sparks to rekindle a faith that had burned down to mere embers. I took long walks through the village; bivouacked for hours on the beach mesmerized by waves crashing along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world; curled into chairs on the wide screened porch of my little cottage for long stretches of time.

I found silence, and solitude. I found hope, and began to see a rekindling of my faith, but peace eluded me. And as I am very much an over-analyzer, I delved oh, so deep into my own heart and soul until a realization dawned. I may have physically left the stressors far behind in the blistering Arizona desert, but I had wrapped and packed those emotional and psychological pieces ever so carefully in my suitcase and carried them the 2400 miles with me. The location had changed, but my heart substantially had not. Though not truly an original thought, this was a hit-the-floor-on-my-knees moment.

Truth shot an arrow into my heart: somethings I more than willingly surrender, willingly forget, willingly forgive others and myself. Other things, long held things, lie buried just beneath the surface, and all one need do is run their fingers lightly along those scars, and I bleed open those long held wounds as if they were fresh slices into my fragile human skin, frail human soul.

I’m not talking small, insignificant ‘you-took-my-parking-space’ things. No, I mean real, deep, wounds that no matter how hard I prayed, I couldn’t release. And when I gathered the courage to peer even closer, the things that drove the knife deepest and then twisted it hardest weren’t the things for which I can easily lay the blame at the feet of someone else. Instead, they’re the parts that I played, the roles for which I couldn’t forgive myself.  I wondered how many times my heart could break for the very same things? How many times I could pray for forgiveness and still feel guilt? And, then something whispered to my soul Psalm 51: 1-2, 17:

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

Mere arrogance, believing I know better than God, kept me from accepting the grace that He had already given. Mere arrogance kept me holding onto the pain of my own past, my own sin. The thing is that the life (or lives) that I walked when those transgressions were committed no longer existed in His mind. He’d cast them away; and if He had, then I needed to do no less. I needed to let those lives and those transgressions with them sink their way to the bottom of the deepest sea and consciously choose (perhaps daily) to see my life as He did, see myself as He did. If He believed I’m worthy of love and hope and forgiveness, who am I to argue? And, having worked that out in my over-analytical mind, peace finally descended and settled upon me. It was time to allow Him to open the doors to a renewed life, one with room for good memories but no place reserved for the darkness of my yesterdays.

With that mindset, I trekked around the backstreets of the island today and found my great-grandmother’s house. The brown shingle-sided rambling house sits by itself in a meadow, and I could envision the generations of women who came before me sitting on the front porch, and the picture in my head made me smile. Those women wouldn’t recognize their sleepy, fishing village today, but their house in its meadow just steps from Silver Lake (or The Creek as they called it) probably looks much the same, and for that my heart was glad. Home should feel familiar; as I turned away those echoes of familiarity stayed with me, and I knew they’d be replacing the space that only hours before held echoes of darkness, held echoes of sin. Truly darkness replaced by The Light.

Out past where the waves break an older man struggled to stay upright on a paddleboard; his bearing marked him for an amateur. I watched as he teetered then tottered then finally lost the fight and fell into the water.   I waited on the beach anxious to see him climb his way back onto the board. Moments later he did and knelt there for several seconds then stood again, paddled again, fell again. Process repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated… From my safe little nest on the beach I smiled. I admired his perseverance, wondered if I’d do the same.

The question seems simple when addressing a paddleboard, but it really is a broader question about life, yes? In any given situation, you stand, find your center of balance, feel safe, then comes a slightly (or much) bigger wave than you expected, and you’re no longer stable, can’t recover your center (no matter how much yoga or Pilates you do), and you find yourself tossed into the water. Now, you have a choice. Do you stay treading water, hoping against hope that the life you knew comes back around to pick you out of the depths before your legs and stamina give out, or do you climb back on the board and try again? Start all over? Keep moving forward, not giving in or up because something more lies before you out there on the horizon, something worth moving toward?

There have been waves in my life – several of them – that have knocked me into the water, and, between you and me, I have merely treaded water, sometimes for years. I have waited for those lives I knew, lives I held onto by the tips of my fingernails, to pluck me into the dry safety of their little rafts. I’ll tell you, those rafts never came. I cried, I screamed, I begged in prayer, and…nothing. I was left treading water.

The truth we avoid telling ourselves is that those rafts aren’t supposed to come. Once we’re knocked off the board, those lives fall into the water with us, and the lives, well, they don’t tread water. Instead, they sink down into the darkest, coldest depths never to be salvaged (even in a James Cameron film).

We can mourn those lives for an appropriate amount of time, but then we need leave them lie on the bottom of the ocean and turn our faces to the horizon, set our hearts on the next attempt because, truly, we don’t live in what has happened. We live in what is happening, and if all we’re doing is treading water awaiting a raft that isn’t coming, we’ll miss the magnificent moments God has planned for us right now. And if we’re seeking Him on a road we’ve already travelled, we won’t find Him waiting there either. He’s with us in the immediate moment. He’s waiting up ahead as well, but He’s not petrifying in our pasts.

So, let the waves come because sometimes the lives we’re living aren’t the lives we’re meant to live, and the only way out is being knocked into the water. Or sometimes bad things or unexpected things just happen.  Regardless of the “why,” let that life sink; let it settle into the sandy ocean floor. Then climb back on the board and paddle into the horizon, into the next chapter written.

Sitting on the beach, my toes buried in the warm sand, soft breeze cooling my already burning skin, my Dutch/German/Irish heritage ensured a decided lack of tan. Instead I burned by finite degrees regardless of the SPF promised by Coppertone.  I was too enshrined by saline scented bliss to care about my reddening skin. The beach was (is) my happy place – Atlantic Ocean stretched out before me, deepening from shades of soft moss green to deepest grey where it met an azure horizon, waves breaking on the shell-littered sand, kites flying overhead, children laughing. My book lay abandoned beside my chair. There was no way the sinking of the Lusitania could hold my attention when so much joy surrounded me. (I may have a slight ADD issue.)

Every deep breath I inhaled brought renewal, carried peace – something I’d been missing for so many long months. I knew where I was headed now, where I belonged. When God delivers He does it in huge ways, and this time had been no different. So, as I sat on the beach I whispered words of thanksgiving not just that I was at my happy place but also that I had been given answers. Then I settled in to relax and enjoy every second of a glorious day.

Two hours later, I roused from my sun-induced daze and watched with increasing interest as a man with a bucket and fishing pole strolled into my oceanfront view, stopping about 10 feet in front of me. He looked left and right as if trying to decide if he truly wanted to set-up shop at that particular spot.   Apparently, that was the place because he dropped his bucket and reached down into its depths retrieving a small, whole fish. I watched in stunned and slightly appalled disbelief as the man baited the hook at the end of his line with the little fish and cast far out into the waves.

Now, my opposition to the fisherman arose not out of his sport. My concern stemmed from the slight problem that whatever that whole fish attracted was going to be much bigger than itself, say a shark, and the fisherman was casting into waters populated by swimming children. See the problem? However, I also knew that each and every day sharks swam among the mostly (deliberately) ignorant bathers at the beach, even in the shallowest of waters. After all, it was the shark’s natural habitat, and we were the interlopers. I just did’t want the reminder while I was actually at the beach.

But as I was sitting on the beach contemplating the fisherman and his potential catch, I started thinking about how sharks in the shallows aren’t so different from our every day lives. We know the bumps and bruises and potential hazards and tragedies are out there; we just ignore them, go about our every day lives deliberately pretending that those things that could harm us aren’t weaving in and out of our day. Occasionally, we get bitten or someone we care about gets bitten by life, and we shy away from the spaces that those hazards perpetually inhabit until our hearts heal.  Then we return, a bit more wary perhaps, but we return all the same.

Returning to those places isn’t on our own strength; it can’t possibly be. There has to be something bigger than ourselves that provides the balm to heal the ragged, injured place, sets us straight again, loves us enough to convince us that going back to the site of damage, while scary or terrifying even, isn’t going to destroy us. That “something bigger” is God – omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and just as He created us, He created the literal sharks and sanctioned the figurative ones. There’s nothing we go through in this life He hasn’t already approved, already said that by His strength we will survive. We never walk alone.  Sometimes I forget this; sometimes I need a reminder like a fisherman standing directly in front of me baiting his hook with a whole fish.

In case you were wondering about my fisherman friend, my concern didn’t take long to be realized. Within moments the fishing rod bent low with the tug of something struggling on the hook. When he reeled in the line the catch proved, indeed, to be a very small shark, and, well, that was the end of my beach day.