Vacations are good for the soul

I am back from my Mother’s day weekend in Carlsbad California. I absolutely love it there. I could live there and start my third career as a writer if I had 850,000 bucks for a 1300sq. ft, two bedroom on the ocean and had any actual talent for writing. Everything seems so much more alive there, me included…… I think this desert rose is fading and could use a transplant. But as it is, I don’t have the cash or talent, so I will make due by stealing little weekends with my family at the Hilton Hotel courtesy of Gregg’s frequent flyer miles, spending hours on the beach sandcastling, shell and rock collecting and watching sunsets, huddled together.

Vacations are good for the soul, mine in particular, they remove me from the things that steal my joy. Because I struggle with a mood disorder, I have made peace that I will rarely feel happy. But ironically, because of the thorn and my Jesus, I have learned much joy. It is important that believers seek to know the difference between the two….Jesus was a man of great sorrow but had abundant joy.

As of late, I could feel the little things stealing my joy and I was worried a little because the usual helps for this were not working; I just felt total despair. The worst thing about emotional and mental illness is that there is no tumor on the X-ray, no blood results or deformity, just the subjective feeling of pain and despair, it is lonely and disturbing. But the trip to the ocean seemed, and I hope for a length of time, to bring light. I had a great restoration of joy as I stood in the ocean repeating the second and third verses from the 23rd psalm….even though the waters were not that still, He restored my soul. I remembered who I was, a beloved daughter of Abba. Emotions, when they get out of balance, make you forget who you are.

I wrote a poem that started on my first sunset on the beach and ended with the last:

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself.
My soul’s heaviness, absorbed by the sounds of ancient water, receded like waves which build, crash and retreat back into deep calm

Of all ilk, the seabirds sailed the cool breezes, oblivious to the sandcastlers and activities below.
One old pelican nobly coasted on a lively current as time had taught him not to waste precious energy flapping about like his younger brothers.
He had sojourned long enough to learn not to strive against the wind but to glide along with it.

As the sun surrendered to the horizon, it danced like a golden bead upon the pale gray expanse casting its shimmering radiance across the evening sky.
It surrendered to me too.
It let me gaze fully upon it without searing eye and soul as it would if it were higher and earlier in the day.
I thankfully watched it in its vulnerable state as it slowly melted into another part of the world.

At the last sliver of orange, the old pelican, arrow like from his heights, dove vertically into the white caps, disappearing temporarily and then reappearing satisfied and bobbing with the rhythm of the tide until he flapped his great old wings and returned to the clouds.

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself to the sweet surrender of things greater than I,
which in their time and grace, will surrender to me.