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.
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