I love the beach.  I love the smell.  I love the sounds.  I love to watch the birds and pick up shells.  We had a short time when we actually rented a house on the beach of the Coral Sea and it was wonderful.  I sleep so well when we are at a beach house.  There is just something that speaks to me in that environment.

We usually do a beach trip for my birthday and include the whole family. Due to a lot of different things going on this year we are postponing that trip and it will be a trip to Maine in August and I can hardly wait. A new place to explore and one that I visited in my childhood. But there are lessons that I have learned on beach trips that I have been thinking about again lately and even though April will not have a beach trip I am reliving my last one.

I doubt that I will ever live on a beach again but then I never thought I would live in Australia either so it could happen.  With the beach life come a lot of things that are not so great.  Some of the things that I remember the most about living on the beach was the endless cleaning…..sea spray is very harsh and I was always washing windows and swabbing the deck aka veranda.  Then there was the rust—-even stuff inside the house showed signs of the sea after 6 months time.

The water washes up some marvelous gems on beaches and I love to find that perfect shell.  I have quite a collection that I have collected over the years from all of the beaches that we have visited.  Shells from the east coast, the west coast, beaches in Canada and the Bahamas—they all share one thing in common—they are all part of this great thing called an ecosystem.  As I look at each treasured find I can not help to think that I am kind of like that seashell.  The waves have tossed them around and taken them on a journey that they had really not planned.  When I pick them up so many have been broken beyond recognition.  The force of the water reshapes the shell and makes so many of them almost unrecognizable.   Some are so smooth and almost soft to the touch.

Such is life, isn’t it?

We go through each day and continue on our journey and sometimes get sidetracked and blown off track.  The experiences that we have sometimes crack us and leave us a little bit broken.  My experiences have been similar.  I have been tossed by waves that I was not sure I would come out of.  I have felt the wind whipping through my planned out life –forcing an unplanned change of course .  I have felt the pressure of this thing that we call life more times than I can count.  Through it all I have maintained that it is my faith that has allowed me to come out of those waves and stand stronger on the other side.  I am who I am today because of  the things that I have lived through.  I am a product of my ever changing environment.

My prayer is that as the storms of life come I can accept them gracefully and come out the other side like one of those shells that I have found on the beach—worn smooth by the battering of the waves and water and full of beauty.  Each one is unique in how it has reacted to the water that has been its home and I, too, am unique as a child of God.  May you embrace the uniqueness of you today as you journey on in this thing we call life.