We love the beach… who doesn’t? Everything looks so beautiful and warm. Peaceful. It is our happy place. It is a lot of people’s happy place as you can tell by the traffic on the road, the endless bodies on the beach, and the long wait times at every restaurant. Now as I’m writing this I am trying to decide if I want to go jump in the car or do I just want to get back in the bed.
We have gone to a particular place for many years. We know how to find our way around and the places we enjoy most. It is familiar. It is comfortable.
My husband and I have been to this place with our family and with large groups as student pastors. Generally not a care in the world. All fun and games….until it isn’t.
I love the water. It washes over me and I feel a cleansing with each wave. One day I was out enjoying the ocean with a group of students, alone. The only adult. We were having a grand time. Laughing, playing, bodies bobbing up and down, and having a magnificent time. Not a care did we have, not a thought about what might happen next.
In 1 (ONE!) instant the sky turned gray and a suction started coming up from the water – a suction! All of a sudden a HUGE wave came and all of us were thrown in different directions. Not but a split second allowed us to come up for air when another wave would roll across and pull us out further. There have only been a couple of times in my life where I thought that I might die. This was one and I was terrified! Let me remind you that I was the only adult out at the beach and these students were in my care.
The majority of the students got on the other side of the rip current but two young girls and myself. We were caught! I pushed one across to safety, the other was terror-stricken. She fought me but I finally was able to push her across as well.
Now me!
I was getting exhausted. Waves were hitting me constantly and pulling me out. I tried to swim to the side (because I had always heard to do that), it did not help. I could see the student’s faces. All were wide-eyed just looking at me. I prayed “Please, God, do not let them watch me drown. Do not let them watch me die.”
One student, a tall, young man had been wading to the side in the water, trying to follow me. I looked at him, met him eye to eye, and gasped “HELP ME!” The student was able to grab the very tip of one of my fingers and he was able to pull me to safety. We all got to the beach. I sat down and just cried. Even as I sit here writing this, panic is overwhelming me.
Our lives are often moments that quickly, sometimes instantly, go from carefree to intense terror. This can be in all areas of your life. A job loss can be an instant financial catastrophe A relationship can end with just a phone call. The status of your health can be forever altered with one word. A split-second lapse in judgment by someone else can completely recalibrate the trajectory you thought your life was on. Our definition of “normal” is changed forever. “Normal” life is tipped over by a situation or circumstances that you did not see coming but adversely affects not only your physical life but your mindset forever.
So the question everyone is asking….what do you do when you are caught in a riptide and the waves just keep coming? You are exhausted, you can’t fight anymore….all you can do is gasp “HELP ME!”
I do not pretend to understand what someone else may be feeling or going through. Although I may have been in a similar situation, I am not you and I can not feel what you are feeling. The feelings that each of us has is shaped by our thoughts which are chiseled by a variety of different past, paths, partnerships, and patterns.
Continually renewing my mind to Christ has been a moment-by-moment conscious decision that I have had to learn and relearn during different seasons of my life. Pursuing full knowledge that I am not the one in control of my life or my future has at times felt exasperating. Being a fleshly control freak has not served me well in my past why in the world would I believe that it could serve me now or in the future? Coming into a relationship with the One who created me, wired me, knew me before I was conceived is the only answer that I have. I am not a very educated person. I do not possess a higher degree or even profess to know answers to questions that I can not even completely wrap my mind around much less the vocabulary to express them with precision.
Not making sense to the world is only fitting. Being the Creator of the world and everything that is contained in and under Heaven is beyond our nanoscopic capabilities. The hope of glory and everything being fulfilled made whole and complete will only be revealed in eternity. Answers are not promised on this side of Heaven.
Ohhh the pain….doesn’t a loving, just God want the best for us now? “Now” is the issue. Now is not the time in which I believe our Lord operates. He is the God of all time. He is the answer to every question, every equation, every circumstance, and every situation.
It is His grace that is multiplied on us daily that enables us to cope, deal with, handle or even feel like we can survive.
Let me invite you to meet or renew your relationship with the One that is the ONLY. He is the ONLY everything.
Pray with me:
Father,
I come to You today thanking you for the revelation of You. Thank you for the experience that I had when I awakened to the relationship You already laid out at the beginning for me. I ask you, Lord, that right now, You come to the one reading this and that You allow them to feel Your Presence like never before. I say “like” never before because Your Presence made us. God, I ask that you touch each one where they are right now that your touch stills their minds of everything accept You. If only for 5 minutes, Lord, let Your Presence be clear to them.
I love you and I ask these things in Jesus Name.
Amen