A couple weeks ago we went to Michigan to visit my family. We flew out on a Friday night—it was already going to be a late arrival, and then we were delayed three hours. We roamed a mostly-shut-down LGA, watched the end of the Knicks game, finally arrived at the cottage past three am. The week before had been an intense one, and by the time we arrived, my nerves were shredded.
Over the course of the next couple days, we played baseball out by the apple trees, went for a cold but beautiful boat ride, sat around the kitchen island while the dogs ran around us in happy circles.
We drove my beloved Wrangler up and down Blue Star Highway from South Haven to Saugatuck and back, and William and I picked up a tray of sweet iced coffees for everyone while Henry made French toast in my parents’ kitchen.
It was busy and fun and we were outside at every possible opportunity, gulping down lungfuls of the cool spring air. And when there were even just a few minutes in between things, I went straight to the water, staring at it almost like it was going to give me some sort of sign. I was begging, almost—help me. Tell me something.
I let the expanse of the water almost hypnotize me, watching wave after wave, studying the way the clouds change the color of the water as they move across it. I’ve been feeling knocked sideways by some of the challenges of this season, and I felt pulled to the rhythm of the waves like a magnet, like how the moon and the tides pull against each other.
In one hand I held a book but didn’t read it. In my other hand I held a glass but didn’t drink from it. I just watched the water. I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember--the water has always been the place on earth I head toward when I need to know something, when I need to be spoken to by something bigger than myself.
God has always whispered to me through the water more consistently than anything else on earth, and it makes sense that when I needed a sign, something in me kept pulling me to the shore.
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