Life Like the Ocean

Me and Chica used to compare hard times to being in the ocean.  We loved the beach.  And we loved the ocean too, funny enough. You know when you’re done swimming or surfing out there and you’re ready to come back in, so you start paddling in and the waves help carry you in up to a certain point... but then it gets to the point where you have to stand up and walk in the mushy sand and possibly broken shell pieces as the current draws the water backwards against you to the ocean? You have to fight against that water pulling back in as you’re walking up to the shore, all while the waves are still coming in and crashing too. We would laugh at ourselves as we would kind of stumble sometimes making our way back up.

That’s life though, isn’t it?  Sometimes it’s easy and you’re carried forward.  But then it gets hard and it pushes and pulls you as you’re just trying to move forward.  Right? 

Here’s the thing though - at no point did we ever sit down where the tide went in and out, with the waves crashed on the shore, and say “ugh. It’s too hard to get back to the chairs and towels... I’m just going to stay here in this hard spot and eventually drown.”

Now that may sound like a silly analogy but think about it - how often do we do that in our lives instead of pushing forward no matter how tough it may be to keep moving?  Life will push and pull you, and things will crash, and you’ll think “can I just get there?!” It’s HARD.

You will get there.  You may stumble, but that’s okay.  You may have to pick yourself up after a wave topples you over and stabilize your footing again.  That’s still progress - it helps make your next steps you take stronger. 

Keep moving forward.  Eventually, you make it back on the beach... whatever that means to you.  Don’t give up.