Going Places and Coming Home

This time of year always reminds me of the ocean. I've only seen the coast twice, and even then it was just the Gulf of Mexico, but I still remember a bit of the smell and the wind blowing in from the water.

It's almost harvest time here in Oklahoma, and the wheat is tall and rustles a bit as the winds blow it in wave after wave. On humid nights it even feels and smells a little bit like the sea, or what I remember of it.

I think it's all so vivid tonight because ten years ago this week I was on my senior trip to South Texas, and I had just written and posted a letter to my best friend and bicycling buddy back home telling him I wanted to be something more than his friend. I told him I couldn't bear the thought that I would leave for home (I lived in the dorm.) and we would both go our own ways. There was so much unsaid, and I didn't know where I stood or where I should stand, or if I was even in the right place.

I remember sitting on the beach one night of that trip, talking to a friend and staring out at the waves that were so foreign to me, and so strangely familiar. I felt like I had taken a huge leap out into space with no clear idea of how far it would be to the other side. I desperately hoped I would stick that landing somehow, but I had a gnawing, twisting fear that it would all have been for nothing and I would fall flat on my face to the jeers of the crowd.

Here I am, ten amazing years later, with my best friend reading stories to our children, and my life so full of peace and love it sometimes scares me. Not only did I stick the landing, but he was waiting for me on the other side with his arms opened to catch me whether I fell or not.

I felt especially blessed tonight as I walked outside and smelled the waves of wheat. God brought me home in so many ways ten years ago. He gave me my very own ocean.

This post entered in Scribbit's Write-Away contest.