Ain't That Swell?

I've been thinking a lot lately about trouble.  Maybe that's because I'm so good at finding it. I've become something of an expert at it. It's not just simple, run-of-the-mill trouble, either. I have perfected the art of perverse catastrophes. I had a friend once tell me, "I'd never believe all the crazy stuff that happens to you if I weren't with you when it happens."  I'm not even sure how to take that!

It's not the random insanity that gets to me. I can roll with my driver's license getting stuck in the pneumatic tube at the bank, lingering forever somewhere under the drive-through lanes. I can shake off, literally, the twenty gallons of milk falling out of a cooler and bursting on me in front of every person in town at Kroger. I can even handle the time my skirt fell off in the daycare parking lot. I mean, those atypical things are so typical for me.

What gets to me are the big things: being out of work for over a year, feeling like a failure in my professional and personal life, struggling to grow in my faith the way I feel I should, feeling torn between this urgency I feel to try something new and terrifying while trying to learn to let go of my familiar safety nets.  These are the storms that rock me.

I find comfort in small things. Usually it's the tiny things in life that speak the loudest to me, when I take the time to listen.

The last time I was visiting friends near Savannah, I headed down to Tybee Island alone for some quiet time before leaving. I walked along the beach, relaxed in a lounge chair, gathered shells. As perfect as it was, I still felt unsettled. Peace was hard to come by.

As I was strolling along, looking out at the waves and the horizon and contemplating the ways of the world, I noticed the gulls along the surf.  I watched them all scurry when the big waves came in. They'd waddle down to the shoreline and scatter the moment the waves broke on the sand.

All except one.

Riding the momentum of the next gigantic swell, he was picked up off the sand and dragged backwards into the sea. I watched, fascinated and a little worried over this crazy bird, as he was tossed and rocked by the water that covered him time and again. Why didn't he fly away? Why didn't he fight the current? What was he thinking? In my mind, this dumb bird automatically assumed a maleness. Yes, yes, I know. I'm a horrible person, but what's the use in lying in my own blog? I was positive this whacked-out sea gull was a boy.

At any rate, I kept watching; just when I was sure he would drown, he rode the tide out past the surf to the place where the sea calms. A little embarrassed by my anxiety, I saw him gently bob further out into the ocean, perfectly content with his circumstances. Maybe this bird was a girl, after all? The gentle swells pulled him along to whereever he was headed. I wasn't sure if he even knew where that was, but it certainly didn't seem to matter. He was fine with it all.

In that moment, I knew I needed to be that bird. Like the seagull had waited out the waves of trouble crashing over him, I needed to wait out my own troubles. Too often when we see things headed our way, we scramble. Just like those waves, our fear and perspective make difficult times appear worse than they really are, and we can wind up making a mess of things. Even if we manage to avoid some really bad choices, we wreck what we're working on in our hurry to get out of the way before we're swamped.

Sometimes, we just need to ride it out. I needed the faith and trust of that bird. Sit in the trouble; let it crash over me; and, after it passes, I'll float out on the swells to the open sea, where I can look at my situation clearly without all the brouhaha of the breaking surf.

So, if you ever look at me and think to yourself, "What's that dumb girl doing? She's going to drown.", just remember -- I'm working on becoming a seagull.