I have such a complicated relationship with the beach. I guess all my relationships are complicated...lol. The beach is a place I have spent so much of my life. Living next to it or at least close to it. In truth, I am more of a mountain girl. While I love the beach, the mountains are where I feel most alive.
Truth be told, I love the beach but hate the way the salt air clings to my skin, making me feel like some sort of crustacean washed up on shore. And don’t even get me started on the whole sand issue. But perhaps my love for the ocean and beach is greater than my love for the mountains...because I have quite a few of my own issues to get over to love the beach. As vain as it sounds, my hair also goes completely flat at the beach. Like the weight of the salt air ties tiny little weights to each strand of my hair, limping it and leaving it frizzy and weird. I know, vainglory, all of it.
That was harder for me to admit than I would like to believe...
So despite all my stupid vanity, I do love the beach. I can walk for hours and hours and just meander through time and space. It is like time stops when I am there and my pace slows and I am just there, walking down the beach, allowing all my swirling Erin-ness to just be for once.
And there next to the water’s edge, something in me unwinds itself, and I am released to, what, I am not even sure. God? Presence? Myself? I guess to what is less important than me being released at all.
This vacation has been a lovely mix of time spent in the mountains, the desert, and the beach. I love Australia (like California) has all three. I seem to need them all. The mountains for when I need to feel nearer to God, the desert when I need to think and strip away all I think I know, and then the beach where I go to give all that I hold onto back to God like some sort of feeble offering. The beach is absolutely my temple, my solace from the world and myself. A place where I can give up and surrender all my extra-ness and sink a little more deeply into the skin I am in.
So the beach, like the desert, helps me strip away all my excesses and just be the person I think I am supposed to be. But the beach adds the element of water that somehow acts as some sort of liquid salvation for me. Like the tidal waters beckon me to release all that I am hanging onto, all that I do not need but tend to think I do, and to give it the greatest manifestation of God’s grace and power: a wave that wipes the slate clean, clearing away all my internal debris, my footprints evincing I am there at all and the blemished thought patterns from my mind. The beach is where I go to cleanses my soul. The ocean waves come in and take all they deem worth taking.
Seems like my particular soul needs that kind of clearing regularly...which I have come to be grateful for as well. Healing isn’t a one and done process, healing, at least for me, turns out to be more like a long beach walk that tires, cleanses, rejuvenates and takes from me all the things that no longer serve me, and replaces that with all I do need. Or at least makes space for me to hold onto it if I ever find it...
Again...still.
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