Puerto Rico Part 1: Swept Away

I recently took a trip to the island where my mother was born and raised: Puerto Rico. During our time on the island, mom decided that it would be fun to stay in a resort. We drove from Bayamon, an area on the north-east side of the island where my mom grew up (it's near San Juan), to the west side of the island to a town called Rincon (There should be accents on this and Bayamon, but I don't really know Spanish that well. Sorry :)). The group consisted of my parents, my little cousin Barbara, my "Titi" (aunt) Alba, and myself. We ate incredible food, went snorkeling off the coast, visited a local crafts fair, and watched a sunset by a lighthouse. It was all amazing, but my favorite part was just walking by the ocean at our resort. This was mom's least favorite part because her balance is not the best and she would almost fall every time the wave retreated and the sand moved from beneath her feet. But here is this ocean, relentlessly beating up against this beach. Every time I looked down, I saw sand particles that may never be all together at one time ever again. Each wave hit my legs and feet and was so powerful that it could have knocked ME over. The ocean reminds me of what life is like. Everyday things are changing... the past will never fully repeat itself. Trying to hold on to the past is useless because the waves of life, just like the waves of the ocean, will pull that sand right out of your hand or right out from under your feet. You can't worry about the future either because there are billions upon billions of other sand particles out there and it's pointless to try to guess which particles will hit your feet at the same time. The only thing we have any power over is the present - relaxing in the wave that hits you in that moment and saying goodbye as it pulls the old sand away, promising to come back soon with new sand. The wave is God's love and I'm sure that most of you reading this have heard this analogy used before. God's love is strong, powerful, and relentless. No matter how you hard you try to fight it, to tell that wave to stay in the ocean and away from you, it won't listen. God's love gets you soaked sometimes, if the wave is big enough. Sometimes it takes a little more than a splash to wake us up to what he's trying to say... and he will always deliver that wave to you. Finally, God is always orchestrating our little details, our little grains of sand. He gives and he takes away. What he takes away, you cannot hold onto... and why would you want to? Why would you want to hold onto the old when he has something gloriously new ready to give you? Let go of the worries of the past and future and let God walk with you down the beach, crashing his love over you in the present.