The beaches of Maui were more beautiful than I could have imagined. It was afternoon and I had been snorkelling; to call it a peaceful moment seems like an understatement. I was leaving the water and didn't feel the wave coming until it was too late. This wave wasn't anything remarkable by any measure, but it took me off my feet and sent me slamming face first into the sand. At first thought I had broken my neck. I couldn't see what way was up; next I thought I was going to drown. I got tossed a couple of more times before I struggled onto the beach - face, arms and legs bleeding and scared senseless.
I hadn't known what a shore break was. They have since put a sign on Big Beach where it happened (this article, giving the above definition, goes into more detail of what the danger of shore breaks can be).Although I had been respectful of the waves previous to this, the shore break taught me a reverence for the ocean.
The last few months of life have felt like a series of shore breaks for me.
***
I am thankful for the chapters which have come before this one... the lessons which have prepared me for the ones I am learning of late. At the same time, there are some things that we have to face in life that just don't have primers.
One of the most important lessons I learned in Guiding has been most relevant now:
it is best to be prepared.
Be prepared to be courageous.
Be prepared to have your heart hurt in new (and unimaginable) ways and be prepared to do the hard work involved for healing.
Be prepared to laugh when it seems impossible.
Be prepared to be strong even when everything seems to be broken.
Be prepared to keep keeping on in spite of your own limitations.
Be prepared to hope.
I write today because I realize (and have realized many times in the past) that the lines between disappointment and discouragement are thin and shifty. The ones between discouragement and despair are nearly non-existent.
I find myself often in the middle lands of gray and it is a conscientious effort to choose joy because ultimately there are many things in life that you simply can't be prepared for. From the place I'm in in motherhood today, I can only anticipate the challenges my own sons will face as they go forward into each of their own journeys. However, from this season I would share five small but essential words:
Be prepared to choose joy.
***
Every day following my PE back in 2011 felt like a gift. I was so grateful for those 24 hour periods of time. Part of me doubted recovery and anticipated a bigger incident. Part of me expected The End. Time was different, in the same way it is when you are child and hours seem endless. I learned a reverence for life. Now time is different again and it's because many days it's hard to know what way is up - where I can get my feet into the sand.
I have a new respect for life - for the days that come in gently without the storms and an awareness that the small waves can also have unexpected impacts.
***
As messages of loss from dear friends come to me in my inbox, I feel breathless and I think about messages in bottles - and how life is much more complex than I had ever expected it to be. Losses that seem insurmountable and how words fail me.
Messages in bottles. Finding myself reading these notes in the middle of shards of glass feeling helpless. The scope of losses in this world is broad and incomprehensible.
I can only imagine how each of us would have such a struggle to limit our own messages, the ones we'd write if we could if we had the time and the courage, to write them all on a tiny slip of paper rolled into a bottle to float into the endlessness of sea.
What is to be done with an SOS?
We have to be honest; and I am so thankful for the ones who share their hearts and hurts. My prayer journal fills up with names and requests and entire communities in this broken world we live in - for sadness and grief, for conflicts and tragedies - and as these words are written down, I add to the thankfulness lists. From the front of each book, I write requests and starting from the back pages of the book working towards the requests, I write down the gratefulness list; and although I enumerate the joy, it is not a mathematical equation - there is no balance.
It's a question I keep asking myself: where will I find joy?
I am fascinated (and definitely disconcerted) by the chronicles of pirating life in the carribean which has been romanticized by our culture. In this time of overwhelming life, of things in so many hard boxes, I feel like I am being forced to engage in piracy; I am stealing moments of joy. I am not trying to be poetic; it is a real choice to not be defeated but to search for things - to even carve them out of what seems to be an overwhelming set of circumstances - to be thankful for.
It shouldn't be that hard as I have so much to give thanks for; but the reality is that shore breaks happen.
It is experiencing the expanse of life in the microcosmic and being awed by the scope of miracle in the everyday. Listening to My Lighthouse as it is sung by my two littlest (who are now so very big - what happened to the preschoolers of last summer?) boys as it brings tears to my eyes. This is joy.
Joy in the midst of it all.
Nothing can be taken for granted.
Everything is a gift.
Every. Thing.
Perhaps I am learning that the breadth of small, everyday joy can be expanded in the margins of the depths of challenge, of the seemingly impossible.
Be prepared to give thanks.
Facing the waves, I am also having to be deeply intentional about where I set my focus.
The shore break taught me that knowing how you are going to go into and out of the water is essential and that sometimes (as my Dory key chain reminds me) you just need to keep on swimming.
Be prepared to preservere.
***
There are very few 'quiet' moments in life with four boys, especially now that the days of summer vacation have begun. It's somewhat amusing to me that after being on the receiving end of observations of how busy I must be with 'all those boys', I often get asked what I do with my time when they were in school (the 2.5 hours of kindergarten were primarily filled with volunteering, appointments, and tasks that couldn't get done during the regular hours). But in those few quiet moments, my thoughts would turn to the words that I had wanted to write, of the lessons I was learning...
And yet.
And yet, I see how little I have posted in the past year. Before writing this post today, I went back to look at my blog. Where has the time gone? When I last wrote it was close to winter's solstice and now I write long after summer's solstice. Half a year has passed and life has been happening... but writing has not.
I have been taking the time to write in small moments in the evenings because there have been so many lessons from the shore breaks and in the tidal waves and I don't want to forget what I am learning in the middle of it all.
I write because so much and so little has changed since my last post where I wrote about the letter C. It doesn't take much new news to come to the conclusion that we live in a world which is so broken on so many levels. C is for change. I want to be a part of the change in the tide in this world and I hope to see this pass into the lives of my young sons. I hope that they grow into men of integrity who will be courageous and stand firm against the darkness in this world - against everything from terrorism to apathy. I have learned that in the dark times, the light bearers who bring the simple but remarkable gifts of laughter, encouragement and hope are invaluable in this world; I want to be a part of that change for others and hope my boys see that in me.
C is for Compassion: this past winter has involved a long period of testing for my amazing, intense, out-of-the-box second born. There are a whole myriad of emotions that go into a process like this but what really impacted me the most was the compassion that he has received by those who not only "get" him but celebrate him in spite of (and sometimes even because of) his uniqueness. C is for Curiosity: I am in the process of and have developed a sense of curiosity about this boy (and these boys who are always changing) and the remarkable things that keep happening and keep me wondering why the sand is shifting under my feet as the waves come in.
C is, probably not surprisingly, also for Choosing joy. I adored the movie Inside Out. In the winter I read the book "Choose Joy" by Kay Warren; there were many parts (like her definition of joy) that resounded with me; however, for me life hasn't been about train tracks, it's been about waves and shore breaks.
It's been a season of diverse pressures, of losses, of heart ache and heart break. The fires of RMWB and Fort McMurray and, specifically, how they impacted those who are a part of our family were devastating. There have been challenges from the minute and insignificant (but how these can cause erosion is no small matter) to the dramatic (and in this vein, I am taking this moment to say water safety, water safety, water safety... after helping a family who's young son went under in a matter of minutes at the lake but was unresponsive for what seemed like an eternity, I cannot stress this more), it is tricky to still choose to be seeking joy.
For in the global tragedies to all the little stuff that builds up, a girl might want to give up.
But if we learn anything from past experience or the fictional heroics of Lucy, Frodo, Dory and Joy working with Sorrow, the simplest of acts when all seems lost are always the ones that turn the tide.
***
There are so many things that I am thankful for.... and this is where I start with a new letter - one that seems to be coming up in all sorts of places and so I write my F list as I have been learning so much more about Family, Forgiveness, Forces of Nature, Forgetfulness (both opportune and inopportune), Forging forward, and Faithfulness.
But most of all, this season of shore break has taught me about Friendship.
“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.” C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
In these dark places of this season, the often times lonely treks along the beach, I have been overwhelmed by the few but mighty kindred spirits who have come alongside and given encouragement, insight, laughter and light. In the same way that I was helped at the beach after coming in from the shore break so many years ago, these beacons have made all the difference in the world. To you, I say with deep appreciation ~ thank you.
***
I had no idea almost a decade ago that I would be so thankful now for that lesson in the shore break. At the time I was thankful to not have lost mobility or life; but the thankfulness of the metaphor all these years later, in learning how to move forward in new knowledge, awareness and wisdom in spite of the pain is a gift all in itself.
These gifts do not come easily by any means and most of the time as I am in the middle of the trial I am trying to shake of the feeling of being thrown; but even as I am coming out of being tossed, I see that everything from the perspective reset to learning how to let go can be of immeasurable value.
I don't know what lies ahead, what tomorrow - or even what the next hour - might bring. What I do know is that one other thing I will send with my boys as they go will be another short but powerful phrase that I hope they will hold onto... and it is with this lesson I am learning that I conclude:
Be prepared to trust
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