What I Did On My Holidays!

Cornwall.

We come here or to Devon for the surfing every September. Every year, Jamie, Grace and Jack surf all day from early morning until the lifeguards go home. Every day, they beg me to leave the warm sand, where I am happily ensconced with several novels, to join them in the water. Every year, I leave it until the last day because I am a wimp and scared of being cold.

Then, on the final day of our holiday, I drag myself out into the water. I stand in the shifting sands with the waves lapping my legs, wind whipping my hair into my eyes. I wobble each time a retreating wave pulls out more sand from under me. I venture nervously out into waist-deep water. The seagulls climb overheard in the bright, blue sky. There are clouds low on the horizon, out to sea.

My kids and their dad are screaming with delight at my bravery, splashing me in odd ecouragement. They have wetsuits. I don't! I cross my arms over my chest and edge further out, shivering. The water is very cold, but at least I can't feel my feet anymore.The big waves are breaking right over me now! My arms have to leave my chest and I have to swim to get back to the surface after each one. I'm gasping for breath. I start swimming into right the breakers. It's exhilarating! And freeing.

Every summer of my 50 years I have swum in this Atlantic Ocean - apart from the years we lived in land-locked Ontario, where all we had was a very big lake. Oh, and that summer, long before children, when Jamie and I swam at Malibu. But let me tell you the only exciting thing about the Pacific for me was the possibility of being eaten by sharks. The North Atlantic is MY ocean.

Every summer, I am reminded of the force and beauty of nature. The depth of the sea, the height of the sky, the sheer, magnificent scale of things. And each year since becoming a christian, I feel more and more connected to God's creation by this act of swimming in my ocean. His ocean.

I'm beyond the breakers now. I'm rising and falling with the roll of the swell before it breaks. I look out to sea. There is nothing and no one between me and the next landfall thousands of miles away. I look up. Nothing between me and the infinite heavens. Between me and God. I look towards the land, my land: this green, beautiful, extraordinary Island on the Edge of the World.

The kids are riding the waves again now. Jamie has tumbled into the sea laughing. A few moments of transcendent joy. A glimpse into the future, beyond this life and into the eternal Kingdom.Thank you, oh my Father, for giving this to me.