Rescuing Life And When The Ocean Lives Inside You

It’s early morning. Our toes sink deep into the cool water engulfing the shore-line.

Every step, living foot prints…Like the ones we leave…but often don’t realize it.

Every step, an imprinting, for others to see.

Our search wasn’t careless.

We knew there were treasures….And it was our goal (the goal of all God-breathed beings)…to find them.

For what lies waiting, we may never know if we spend our time sitting staring out the window, never getting our feet wet fearing what might be.

Her dark brown, thin boned, nine-year-old hand, grips mine…

And all the days, years, and waiting to make her name my own, worth it, times a thousand.

Not just a mother and daughter, but two “before time” chosen individuals making family like He intended…placing priority on intertwining hearts more than interests, or blood, or the colors of ones skin.

“They are out there, I tell her.”  Round, circular, life-filled….like every good thing God created.

We look back at the square buildings, the condos risen by man’s workings, along the ocean shores.

Then, we hear the roaring waves shouting, “Come deeper” on the other side where there is freedom.

And why is it we live in square boxes, temporary dwelling places…as if it is where we were mean to be or like we will forever reside there…

When in reality, most of true life happens outside, outside our thinking, our understanding, outside our square screen or systems, or the walls that keep us wondering….

Hasn’t He has called us to play; to live, to dream, to be all He intended?

Just then, she picks up a darker colored circular sea-dweller. I look at it….not glistening in the sun, not shining white along the hot sand…

Just a blending in, darker colored circle with a decoration in the middle.

“Is this one?  Is this a sand-dollar?”

I look at it as the sun peeks stronger over the horizon. My eyes squint as I have to re-frame my mind as to what the fuzzy tentacles are or what life and beauty actually mean.

And instead of hard, coarse, cold, empty….I realize the soft and slimy, darkened texture specimen actually tells me….life resides here.

Unimpressed…I wonder why the dead sometimes look more alive than the living?  Why we pick and idolize and save and make valuable the shells on this planet who sit without any creatures living in them…

Isn’t life what He has died to give?

“It’s alive”, I shout wildly, hoping to make the finding all that much more monumental.

“I have never seen one alive before.  All I have ever known where the dead ones, lying in waist along the seashore.”

And yet, we live in a world where empty shells are a dime a dozen.

White washed emblems that we can take home and carry in our pockets somehow becoming more precious than living creatures who balance so beautifully in our eco-system….

Yet, it is the living that are changing in small increments, their part of creation…regardless of how small.

Her mind starts dancing. I can see my young one’s eyes realizing she has a treasure in the finding of this living creature held tightly in her hand.

It is then I imagine how God must feel…holding the choice of life or death in the very grips of His palm…and having the power to do what He wants with it, while we are fallible.

We then talk about how sand-dollars devour plankton and scoot across the ocean floor, and how if they leave the water, they become a morning meal for the thousands of seagulls watching…

Waiting for them to separate from the other creatures, leaving the oceans meant to protect them.

And isn’t it when we too leave the waters of His love, and find ourselves in judgement, isolation, washed up, separate from those who love us….the sky seems to swallow us?  We too can become shells without substance…beautiful in our representations, though lacking and empty, and completely dead on the inside?

“What do you want to do with it?” I empower her to be either the life giver or the one who chooses to pocket in selfishness the things that aren’t hers.

It is her choice.  It is all of our’s choice.

I regret almost instantly the power I have given my nine-year-old.  Almost the second it slips out of my mouth, I fear her being like most of us, wanting our own trinkets…more than we want to do what’s right.

“I want to through it back”, she blurts without thought or questioning. Just then she lifts her arms….but I stop her.

This giving life, I want her to realize how sacred and precious it truly is.

I pull her hand back and explain that God rejoices when we give.

He get’s glory when we live for the good of others, for the “right” and benefit of all that He has created.

“Now go ahead and throw it deep”….and how many times I have wanted to say that to parents, to believers, to my own soul as it sought to seek the way to go.

She launches it.  We shout and cheer. This mama is more proud than when the Apollo 11 made it to the moon.

My heart sings, “Thank you”…as I see the instincts of this child….most children….far more elaborate and anchored, far more instinctual than those of us who have “worked at” learning what was right.

“Like a child”…I whisper. And oh how I want to become one.

I say a silent prayer for the world to somehow see what she has done. This tiny act, this simple wonder of launching life where it can be all it was meant to become.

We then turn and continue to comb the shores.  Her hands seemingly empty, but love fills her as our fingers lock.

I then start to tell her about the boy who was in Florida who saw a whole shore lines with living sand-dollars.

A man came, a grumpy old, jaded, cynical man.  One condemning what seemed to him as useless and child-like.

The boy started picking up these living sand-dollar one at a time and hucking each one back into the ocean.

The man said, “There are too many, you are never going to make any kinds of difference.”

But the boy, not even looking at the one taring down his efforts, this child of grace keeping his eyes fixed on the deep, and each little living specimen he had within his reach…picked up another sand-dollar and with all his strength, heaved into the sea, shouting “It will make a difference….to this one”.

He words stay silent.  She is thinking.

Then, within moments of tossing her own sand-dollar to life…she finds not one, but two perfectly round, white and beautifully shaped treasures right beside each other.

And I tell her….what we give back, what we do right and good….always, yes always comes back to us multiplied.  

God is the rewarder of those who do good.

Those empty shells taking on a whole new respect and value. That story launched deep within her, as we grab each others hand and walk back to our square hotel, where the sand is getting warmer and the breeze is now at our backs pushing us.

The warm ocean waters crashing deep inside us…

Regardless of how far away from the waters we may be.