Trapped.
No way out.
No end in sight.
The same monotony, the same drudgery...the same grind...forever.
That's what grief feels like.
I left for Spring Break trip to Puerto Rico with one thing on my mind: rejuvenation.
I thought I wanted rejuvenation, relaxation, restoration - but what I really wanted was rescuing.
I wanted to be rescued from my grief. Pulled out of this reality. Woken up from this dream that cannot be my life. This is not the dream.
But, I didn't know it. I didn't know that rescuing was what my heart was seeking...but I did know that my heart wanted to run away. To be anywhere but here (here meaning grief). What I thought I needed was sun and the sea.
What I found instead was this truth:
Sometimes, nothing can assuage the pain.
It just is.
Sometimes, the sea seems more like a constant barrage;
the same battle, every day: the same resistance,
the attack: the roaring sea forcing itself upon rocks that will not move, that will not let the sea advance.
And, yet, over time, the sea wins.
It wears divets,
holes away at the rock,
leaving spaces for pools, for eddies, for waterfalls...
but the rock is changed by the sea.
The sea is not changed by the rock.
So, I don't know...which are we? We are the rock?
Steadfast, firm, meeting the wind and waves;
resisting...but worn down.
Unable to stand forever, the sea will break us down.
And then, just like that - a change in the horizon.
Life emerges from the battle of the elements -
a crab, gorgeous in his red and blue,
crawling upon the surface of the rock,
resisting the waves,
finding solace in the eddies and cracks resultant from the battle between sea & earth.
 |
| If you look really closely on the left-side, you can see Mr. Crab. |
We are not the sea.
We are not the earth.
We are life.
We are like the crab.
Crawling,
sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly.
Sometimes, finding solace,
sometimes moving against the tide.
But doing our own business:
our own calling, our own purpose
separate from the elements.
Sometimes, there is no solace in the sea.
...but, that does not mean that there is no solace.
