Mixed Metaphors: July 20 - 26

The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy. 
Ps. 126:3 

Ocean surf paws the beach, sidling closer for half a day, then slowly backing off, leaving shell shards and seaweed in colorful stripes along the sand. A wave mounts, crests, foams, crashes. The sea exhales it toward shore, then breathes it back in again. For a moment, the whole sea is calm, barely rippling. Then another swell of water arrives, gathering speed and nearing its boundary, curled up in revolt against the last wave, weak in its retreat.

It seems a living thing. Never wearying. Always working. Balancing the lounging tourists who vacation at its banks to escape their relentless lives. Saying, with each breath, “I don’t rest. I’m on duty here. You can count on me. Day and night I'll be crawling in and sliding back out. You go ahead and relax.” 

The sound of the ocean, the white noise that fills the ears like a conch shell, drowns out the nagging voices of real life. Worries are exchanged for sunglasses and stress for a swimsuit and when you’re smeared thick with sunscreen and the sand grits your scalp, you can match your breathing to the long sighs of the sea and let the calm creep over you like a high tide.

Of course, it’s not quite as easy as that. You can vacate without vacationing. Stress from the office and the endless paperwork of life and the drama of relationships can follow you across a whole state, right to the very edge of the continent. There’s still a meal to make or a diaper to change. We still do some laundry and check email. Even on vacation, we still have to do life. For me, the vacation always feels frantic at first, like it’s hunting me down, each day being swallowed up too fast. I obsess about misspending my time, leaving in my wake a calendar row of empty boxes, days misused. It takes a few days of vacation before relaxation glows on me like tanned skin. 

Our vacation this week, though, did eventually glow. After the antsy start, I settled into a restful rhythm: waking early to Henry’s morning chatter, coffee and breakfast, long days on the beach, sandy feet and salty hair, walks in the moonlight, fudge and Twizzlers and ice cream bars, shopping for new toys, wandering on beach trails around the lighthouse. We rested, refreshed our minds and bodies, let the sea do its soothing work. 

We know it’s only temporary. We will return to our ordinary lives and resume the things that the week allowed us to escape. We’ll go back to work, pay the bills, buy groceries and mow the lawn. To some degree, the rest we find on the beach ends when we pack up and drive back toward home. In other ways, though, it can linger. We can carry home the slower pace, the appreciation of small moments, the attention to the people we’re with, the quiet that fills up the soul after the crash of the sea fades over the dunes. 

I spent a lot of time this week thinking about my ideal vacation. I’d like for perfection to be as easy as staying in a bigger house or dining out every night or visiting a less populated beach. But it comes down to an absence of sin and selfishness, something even the best vacation cannot provide. So a week at the beach – or in the mountains or wherever you prefer – won’t really meet the need for real rest. But it does show us what ultimate rest looks like: leaving worries behind, squirming as close as we can get to something – Someone – who never rests, never takes a break, never stops His work. Listening to one tiny shoreline of God’s greatness, trying in vain to fathom the whole of it, letting the loudness of it breathe a surprising kind of peace into the heart that is usually too busy talking to itself to hear anything else. That’s a vacation. And that doesn't require a beach tag. 

Grateful this week for:

dolphin fins
sand between toes
sandy shady nature trail
moon shadows on sand
being the first ones on the beach
boats on the horizon
knee deep water
freckles
fudge
Ticket to Ride on the back deck
shops siding'd with wood shingles
calm surf
bayside beach
finding a lost hat
fresh toenail polish
goodreads
crossword puzzles
one fresh lemon
ceiling fan