We want to believe that everything lasts. We last. Our loved ones last. We feel that today is forever . But the truth is that the sea of life is more like experiencing wave upon wave of change and uncertainty, everything shifting around us and causing us to lose our footing. As we are pulled under the waves, we gulp the salty brine and come up gasping for air, unsure of who we are anymore, where we are, or if we're now all alone.
We instinctively search for a horizon. A landing place. Safety. Anywhere. Until we find something solid to gaze upon and we feel secure again. Certainly nothing will change. Here are some thoughts to ponder:
We're still adrift in the ocean of opportunity, desiring to make our lives count for something…The next wave is always bigger and pulls us under because we had our back to it. We learn. We open our arms wide and embrace the waves. Laugh as they lift us higher in the air to reveal the greater view - the bigger picture. Hungrily we drink in that vast landscape noting the lighthouse we never saw before, the gull resting calmly on nothing halfway out to nowhere, and the long glistening white fish jumping high above the wave, teasing us with its mystery.
We marvel at beauty. Knowing that someone created all of this! The water itself is a divine poet that arranges all the details. But who and how? We write books about this unknowingness, create careers analyzing it, build dams and concrete roads and bridges, and still the water swirls around us mysteriously because we are swimming in the living sea.
We are a part of this living sea. That sea is in us; it courses through our veins, beats in our hearts. Just when we think we've discovered everything, that no one has ever known as much, as waves roll towards us from nowhere, and we are once again terrified as we experience the rush of this newest wall of water. As we surrender to the power of the grand poet - as we're pulled under again by the force of the wave - our limbs dance madly out of control, our heads being dragged painfully against the sand, twisting and turning with abandon - until the wave releases us again. We struggle to our feet gasping - taking in raw, sobbing breaths. Calling out to our friends whom we may have lost in the crushing waves.
Someday we do arrive on the beach through no efforts of our own. Then we realized we had choices in how we rode those waves. There are others who floated above them and some who fought and lost and drowned beneath them. There are also many others who struggled endlessly when they only needed to surrender to the ride, rest their heads upon the salty brine - not trying to stand where it was impossible to stand.
We realized that we exhausted ourselves when we fought and struggled against it and that it would have been wiser to relax, surrender, laugh, and even reach towards someone else who was going under.
We finally see that all faithful souls made it to that celestial shore one day or another, and what really ever mattered was how we rode the uncertain and mysterious waves of life and if we brought someone along with us to the vast Heavenly shore.
John T. Catrett, III
ONHL Hospice Chaplain
124 East Broadway, PO Box 1216
Drumright, OK. 74030
918.352.3080