Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Strong Tides

The waves have been big this week,  probably due to the storms that we have had. Sometimes rough, sometimes just closer together than we are used to, we jump and dive and are occasionally rolled over and over to emerge sputtering and wiping our eyes.

Russ had not been in the water until today. He hurt his leg badly in the airport last Tuesday and has worried that the waves were too much for him. This afternoon he decided to give it a try and we started walking together through the long shallows toward the breaking waves. One of the kids called to me and I walked back out of the water to see what they needed.  A few minutes later I went back into the water walking towards Russ, but the pull of the current toward the east was so strong that I literally couldn't get to where he was.  Before I was able to make my way to him he had decided that the waves were still too strong and his leg was hurting and he went back to his chair.

While I was struggling and straining against the current trying to get to Russ I thought that it was a perfect representation of some parts of my life.  Sometimes I feel like I am straining against the current to get to Russ.  Sometimes I feel like I am working against the current to be productive, or to accomplish a difficult goal.

In the future when I recognize that feeling I need to remember the things I realized today.  That maybe I just need to wait until the current weakens a little.  That perhaps I need to walk out of the water and start again from somewhere else so that I'm not working against the water.  And that no matter how it feels, the difficulty of that moment isn't going to last forever.

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