Dolphins and Not A Few Sparrows

The sea, it calls me. Isn't that a line from a recent Disney movie? What a universal thought. It is easy to take for granted the majesty and wonder of all the magnificent glory that surrounds us. 

I remember the first time I saw the ocean. Our family drove our little VW bug down to Daytona, sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s.  We stayed in a campground, in a swampy tent. Air conditioning was rare and optional back then. When you grow up without it, you don't know that it matters. (Is this why we are fat? Is the air conditioning killing our metabolisms?) Us kids were too busy running around having grand adventures to worry about the heat. The adventures were generally just nature combined with imagination, no trinkets necessary (unless they were found objects along the paths). 

Trudging to the beach is always the hardest part of such a trip. Everyone is loaded down with gear - the scene opens before us, the salty, thick air full of possibilities. The slog of the sand has always been difficult, whether I was young or old. The blissful touch of the water seems so far away, until you're up in it. 

I recall stepping into the surf for the first time. I didn't anticipate not being able to stand up, as the sand sifted quickly out from under my feet. I fell face-forward, inhaling a mouth full of sand and briny sea. I attempted to stand, then was hit with another wave. This was misery. No one had told me the struggle. All I had heard was that the beach was glorious. 

Eventually, after many tries, I began to feel the rhythm of the water, anticipating the ebbs and swells. Instead of fighting, I began to receive it, to flow with it. Decades later, while snow or water skiing, I should have applied the same principles. Alas, I didn't. It was either that or the Slate clumsiness. 

In the water, however, I learned that I could be a ballerina or a dolphin. The possibilities were endless, though it definitely didn't start out that way.  I've had my face scrubbed onto the bottom of the ocean, been tumbled by endless waves that almost drowned me, and dragged out helplessly by evil undertows (one time accompanied by five little boys on a raft). I eventually loved the water so much, I  became a lifeguard and taught scads of children to swim. 

In a typical extended summer, we will make at least a couple of trips to the beach. Our children never had any vacation wishes except to go with our extended family to a old beat-up camp by the sea. The cottages were cheap. You had to bring your own linens and pots and pans, but it was like heaven to all of us. We'd swing on our front porch,  chatting and drinking coffee with every person who walked by. Sometimes we'd have 15 to 20 families there at the same time, renting the little places and making a party of it with family, church folk and other friends. We'd go for two weeks in May and often two weeks in September, for pennies on the dollar. The boys would stack up chairs by the pool and have contests of diving over them. How my children are alive is pretty much a mystery to anyone who knew them. 

This year, there's been no beaching. Everyone was so busy, we did not do our usual family trip. There's grandchildren, jobs, obligations, that have made it much more difficult. I also had a wrist surgery gone very wrong that made it impossible for me to get into any body of water. 

But here we are today and for the next eight days! One of my daughters-in-love along with their five children, overlooking the wondrous water. My wrist is healed; everyone is getting dressed as I write and I'm anticipating the crisp, salty surf and playing with them in the pool. 

Sometimes, life gets rough, and you've cried out to the Lord, and you've surrendered to what He has ordered. Count yourself lucky if you get to drive to the edge of the earth and dive in.  It reminds me that He is so much bigger than us, and yet, His eye is still on the sparrow and I know He watches me.

The Steady

Who doesn't love a good romance movie or book? Intrigue, tension, resolution and then there's the happily-ever-after. 

I am a voracious reader. I like to have 4-5 books going at the same time. Usually they're at my "stations," right by my various sets of reading glasses. Stations include: the recliner where I sit next to Ken, the big double-chair where I read my Bible in the morning, a spot beside my bed, a big armchair in our bedroom, and then, of course, the bathroom (that quiet cave that all Mamas learn early to appreciate). When they invented the Kindle apparatus, however, it changed the world forever. I can have hundreds of books all in one place at my fingertips. Why is it that "they" always seem to find ways to tell us that something, especially if it's newfangled, is bad for us? I saw a study recently that found that Kindles and phones and tablets actually inhibit learning -- that we absorb the information way better if we put our hands on the pages, and that it is better for our brains. I need all the help I can get in that department. That doesn't mean I'm giving up my Kindle, even if I might try harder to aim for physical books. What a treat it is to furtively read by the soft glow of a device while my husband is snoring right next to me. There's definitely something delightful about a good beach read, where the pages get rumply and sand finds its way into the spine. I think of many summers where I have lolled about with a good book on a blanket and gotten a tan while also being transported to far-flung places and adventures. Once our children were old enough to fend for themselves, the reading quadrupled. I hope they forgive me. 

Back to the romance category. Even though many people love them, I lean away. I've got more than I can handle at the house, and I don't need some fairy tale notion of love that has little to do with the sinner I live with (and the debauched one he lives with) -- but to each his own. The idea of romantic love is heady at times, like a roller coaster often, but the test of real love includes the steady, faithful walking over time. Through fire, water, trials, euphoria, delight and even boredom. I've been around the sun enough times to know that if you hang in there, you will get the experience of many different parts of your spouse and yourself, over the span of years and decades. Usually one of you is the nerd and one is the free spirit, but not always. The sandpaper of each others' personalities and foibles are the things that can make your teeth grind and the application of patience seem impossible. 

In these days, buzz words are everywhere: toxic, boundaries, narcissism, "my truth," and "I am enough." We're imperfect, struggling people, at least on the planet I'm living on. We need each other and have been helped all of our lives in myriad ways, even if we've existed in very difficult circumstances. What is romantic is when we find a way to love and forgive each other in the middle of being a mess, which we all actually are (if you could see inside our complicated, irregular selves).

I know only one way to do that, and I am the receiver of so much grace. There is a Fountain...   

Nitpickin' Our Way Through

There are things that we wrestle with in marriage, even 44 years later. The handsome stud muffin I married plagued with OCD qualities, and I with my ADD tendencies are still those same people, though we've changed and changed some more. They say that women marry a man, expecting him to change, and he never does. And men marry a woman, expecting her to stay the same, and she never does. I think this is somewhat true, though I've seen Ken change for the better and I've probably changed for the worse. People don't usually know each other well, when they first marry. We think we do. My young self would have told you that we were very similar in personality. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we took those personality tests some years later, our scores were as opposite as humanly possible. So how does that work out, over the sea changes that happen in a normal lifetime? And how do you not kill each other, when you are so different? Ask me later. Maybe I'll figure it out. That's the problem with these conundrums. Years ago, someone challenged me to write a book about how wives deal with husbands who have lost their jobs. Sounded good. We'd been through the lion's share of unemployment. I began interviewing women who had also been through it. Got lots of testimonials. Had lots of opinions about it. At the end of things, I was schlumped over my computer and stuck, because I had no real clues as to how to deal with such deep and terrible problems. I knew how I was "supposed" to behave, but there were no pat answers, no list of steps to survive in your marriage when things got bad. We managed to make it through it, but not because we had the magic formula (except, well, God, that....) And maybe things in life are not meant to have some mysterious algorithm when it comes to success.  It might be human nature to go looking for things that really aren't there at all. Case in point: there's scripture that says that men are supposed to love their wives. Like, the obvious point of loving their wives. That seems too simple, too common to be the answer to anything. Then there's the admonition to the wife to see to it that she respects her husband. Well, what if he doesn't deserve respect? Or, you don't know my particular husband. God didn't know about him and He obviously didn't know about her. Love. Respect. He didn't say much (or really anything) about the wife seeing to it that she love her husband. Isn't that weird? But I think, in general, loving our husbands isn't the hard part to us women. Respect, however, might be trickier. We see "the way." If he isn't headed there, well, I might have something to say about that. Because us women have a whole lot going on in our finicky brains and we don't naturally agree with how he's leading. If he is. And if he isn't, we demand to know why not. We're complicated. It says to see to it that I respect him, period. I'm not talking about you or your relationship to your husband. I'm not in your family. I'm speaking from these eyes over here on Magnolia Street. And after 44 years, I know that if I find a way to honor and respect that man, his back straightens, his work is better, his eyes get clearer, he often finds the he-man inside him that is stronger, more capable, with more vision. When I pick him to death with my agenda or what he doesn't do or doesn't do well, I find it tears my house down, one puny brick at a time.  I saw this with our sons as well. When the right women came along, the nobler parts of them grew and wanted to do better, to be better. Our son-in-law said he felt the same way when our daughter entered his life.  

On the flip side, when a woman truly feels loved, seen, cherished, that changes everything too. Some get that from their Daddys and husbands. Some don't. I wish I could fix it all, but I can't.

The world can be a complicated place, but what I do know is: these are ancient truths, mysterious yet straightforward. When you examine them closely, they make so much sense. Who needs the psychiatrist? Just kidding, I'm not going there...