Lessons on the beach

Finally we've gone to the beach. Abby lives about eleven miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Sounds close but it takes 25 minutes because you really do go the exact speed limit on a military base. Really.  Cruise control is our friend.

So, while we're waited for the paint project to dry we grabbed the puppy and off we sped to the beach- ha!

Lots of trapped water in shallow ponds- warm summer fun,  interesting winter photos

I'm not a big beach person- you might guess from my mountain rants.

May or June 1986
Family lore says she was less than a month old.

But my baby girl loves the beach- her daddy loved water and she is his little fish.
She can't wait to take her little man to the pool this summer.

Abby and Samson

So we walked on the beach. Samson, the Shiba Inu wonder dog, chased  Styrofoam squares and dashed in and out of the waves close to the beach. He's an interesting little dog but has a mind of his own so he stayed on his leash and almost yanked Abby off her feet when he saw ANOTHER piece of white to chase,"Run with me. This is fun, Mom!"
 It was chilly- the temp was supposed to be 55 but the wind off the dunes stung our bare calves and  reminded us it was February.



Then I saw a piece of green sea glass- fine, it was probably a Heineken beer bottle but it's now a pretty piece of sea glass.  


And suddenly there were lots of translucent, smooth, round .... stones? glass?  Who knows what they are and I don't care- I  just love the way they feel in my hand. I want to carry them around in my pocket. I want to write words on them and stack them on my desk.   I want to rub oil on them to keep them shiny. 
I love my .... cool beach things.

Weird thing?

Then this glob showed up. What is that ugly thing? I pick it up and it's hard, heavy in my hand.

Ahhh.....

Turning my beach find over, I discover it's... a sand dollar?  Yep, a fragile, break in your hands, sand dollar. I've never seen one encrusted like this. Or this hard and heavy, this durable.  Not easily broken but no longer a delicate beauty either.

There's a lesson in this. 

This month I've been around all the pretty, young wives I remember from my years on military bases.  I've seen more cute little kids and thought more about babies than in the past ten years.  Fresh, young, just starting out... maybe a bit fragile.  Certainly delicate. 

Age changes the physical. The human body thickens and sags- sigh. I remember the first time someone said, "She's short - like you but she's ... tiny." My throat tightened and I wanted to stamp and yell, "I used to be tiny!"   My waist isn't what it was ... quite a few years ago. I have bumps and lumps. My skin is no longer taut or dewy. I'm no longer delicate. 

And I am no longer fragile. 

Like the sand dollar with its visible attachments from years in the sea, I have attachments from years in this life, invisible attachments.  I've had seasons of fighting depression that has attached to me a greater understanding of myself and revealed a strength I didn't know I had. I now have a stronger backbone - built partly from making myself show up and do what had to be done in some tough times. I trust more in my own intuition - a lesson learned from ignoring that small voice.  Some of my wrinkles were earned crying for a wounded child, some were etched on my face by my own grief.  Either way, life has hardened me  just like the sea hardened the sand dollar.

There is beauty in both - in the sand dollar and in me.  Unlike the enrusted sand dollar, I'm not hard on the outside.   I'm not hard, inflexible or bitter on the inside but, like the sand dollar, I'm not fragile anymore either.   I'm... durable- 

Able to withstand wear, pressure, or damage; hard-wearing. (of a person) Having endurance.

Synonyms:

lasting - enduring - permanent - abiding - solid - stable

I like that. 

I can handle a few wrinkles just like the sand dollar can handle a few sea shells stuck to its side. 

The sand dollar will endure and abide.  So will I.  

                       Stable and not broken by the rough waves.

                                                       lessons from the sea. 

“Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence…the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.”
Malcolm Muggeridge, A Twentieth Century Testimony.