Over the weekend I went to Carlsbad. I think it really might be my very favorite place to truly escape near home. It is a place I know down to my bones - everything about it is familiar. I know where to exit the interstate and where to park (and that is saying something for a girl who is seriously navigationally impaired). Carlsbad features all the simple pleasures - the slight chill in the air from that ocean breeze, the instant frizz due to the constant moisture, the layer of sand that appears on virtually everything but somehow isn’t bothersome because you are at the beach. It is where I was raised. It is where you can sleep at night listening to the waves softly lulling in the background. It is where my family can be found. It is the hallow and sacred space where joy spreads across faces and there is something profoundly deep and meaningful in the extraordinary normal of walking at low tide as a wave crashes on the shore and drenches you both in water and laughter, in building drip castles and drawing in the sand, in gazing at wonder at the silhouette of your 3-year-old bestie with the sun setting magnificently behind her… there is no other place like it. It is a place where parents and kiddos are all jumbled together like one big herd and the raising up is done together. It has always been that way. Where pouring in love and building up in character isn’t someone’s job but everyone’s pleasure. Where sitting around the campfire and searching the night sky for the stars becomes a place of honesty and truth-telling and a recollection all the same.
My parents are entering a new stage of life alongside their friends - they’re all retiring. It is strange. I suppose the same could be said about us as “kids” - we are “the adults” and to a large degree, we have children. I am just the exception to the rule. This weekend while I was visiting I heard from Anna’s dad (whom I would define as an “institution in my life”) that I NEED a mate. I honestly didn’t think much of it - I have had so many years or burying my marriage dreams and saying goodbye to wanting to raise kids with Anna. I have LONG yearned to have a little girl splashing around in those waves with Adelynn and parading her darling little ruffled bathing suit self down the 104 stairs holding grandma and grandpa’s hands. Alas. I think as the “grown-ups” age and settle into this season they’re realizing how much they truly enjoy each other - and their kids - and their grandkids. It is the real joy of life. Rick was saying “pick a mate Shell” in love - because he doesn’t want me to hit retirement and not have ALL OF THIS around…he doesn’t want me to miss the very good stuff.
I wonder if people think I miss the good stuff all the time - that I’m not aware that it is swirling all around me. I see it all, I promise. I also choose to believe that there is good stuff now - in the way that Adelynn looks at me and Jeremiah says my name…in walking to coffee with all my people even if my husband isn’t part of the picture yet…in HOPING against all hope that a husband is still coming and there is a family written somewhere in my story whether biologically or via foster care or adoption and I haven’t missed one moment that was crafted perfectly for me, for us. I CHOOSE to believe that God promises to restore the years the locust have eaten (Joel 2:25) and though it is hard to imagine what that will look like I will stand firm like the mighty in faith who have walked before me and TAKE JOY.
I will choose to say EVEN STILL - and you know what - that is SO MUCH EASIER to say when staring at the mighty expanse of the oceans - when I can truly be still and know that He is God. I’m telling you, there is just something magical about the sacred and holy of Carlsbad…
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