I’m Sticking with Faith
Left the house at 10 this morning. It has turned out to be a beautiful morning with mostly clear skies. It is just breaking into the 50’s and I am beginning to feel some of that sun.
I get to the parking lot and the water looks smooth.
When I get to the beach it seems as though there are fewer people than normal for a late Friday morning. I only see a couple people on the entire strand.
That stack of rocks that I saw a couple months ago still lies in a pile on the sand right by where I begin my swims.
I head out into the water. It’s cold. The surf is way down from Tuesday. The surf report claims 2-3+, but I’m wondering where the 3 is, let alone the ‘+’. While I usually prefer smaller surf over huge surf. Sometimes it is nice to have some waves to help me get wet. Today it is like walking into a pool and at some point, an act of will needs to be summoned to fully submerge. That’s not easy to invoke today. But here goes nothing.
Immediately I sense something wrong. Doh! My goggles are still on my forehead and I take in two eye fulls of salt water. Brief pause as I lower my goggles into position and then resume the swim.
The cold definitely has more of a bite to it today. Of coarse the temperature on surfline doesn’t move so who knows what the actual temperature is.
After a bit, my body adjusts and I begin to feel comfortable. The comfort sits on what feels like a razor’s edge. A mild warmth rises with my breath through my solar plexus and into my upper torso. I relax into that warmth. The slightest bit of tension can morph that warmth into cold. I remember the very first time this clicked for me two years ago. It was an overcast day and I was in the southern most end of the swim. I could physically feel the cold dissipate in the calm. I often reflect on that moment. Certainly I do now but also when stress or worry hits me during the day.
I feel myself reboot in this water. This morning, and all this week, I’ve had training from 5 to 9 in the morning. The last two days were particularly rough to stay alert and then to not slip into this drama of how much work can suck. Like all other things, work life seems to have a rhythm. You can have a week or years of great work experiences and then crash into a week or years of doldrums. I’m in the latter and I often have moments of a sort of “what am I going to do with my life” panic and then I find the best thing is to focus on is my breath and that moment two years ago in the water.
I surrender and trust that my life is being guided. It can be super frustrating and scary when you don’t have a precise vision of where you are going even if you feel that you are indeed going somewhere. It can be easy to succumb to doubt and think that all this trust nonsense is just that - nonsense and fairytales. I wonder if this so-called faith is getting the better of me and holding me back.
Then it hits me, “what is the alternative?” If we are all just random atoms floating through the cosmos and there is no plan, no grace, and just pure survival of the fittest - if that is our universe, what would I do differently then? I don’t know. Try harder? Live like I am being managed by Elon Musk and work out my life as if there is a bomb strapped to my head (this is something he allegedly told his employees to do). Well that looks a lot like panic to me and panic is usually the very worst thing you can do.
I’m sticking with faith.
I finish the swim and it was all just lovely. When I get back to my car I have an email from my dear friend Ed Piorek. I had shared a post with him where I was contemplating a resurrectionless Christ. Now Ed, a long time pastor, could have tried to point out all the things wrong about that post. However Ed has this way of NOT focusing on dogma and helping me shift my focus on Jesus. He didn’t tell me to do that, but his message did just that and made me realize that regardless of my fascination with biblical and historical criticism of Christianity (which I intend to continue to nurture), I am drawn even more to the simplicity of faith in Jesus. That made me feel good.
