dreaming + doing.

 {St. George Island, Florida 2011}

It hit me as I made the 30-second trek from house to beach last week that not everybody gets to do this.

Not everybody travels 70 some-odd miles down the road and makes the trek across a bridge to a place where, thank goodness, time hasn’t touched too much.

Not everybody loads up in a tiny house with their family for a week and survives.

Not everybody spends their days reading good books and floating in the salty water and drying in the hot air.

But since I was a scrawny little eight-year-old kid, I’ve been doing these things.

And last summer, when we didn’t make our annual visit, I promise you, I could tell the difference.

This past week I confided to my mother that I think I am more myself at the beach. I am who I would be if I didn’t sit inside at a desk all day, if I didn’t have countless commitments and burdens and worries, if I stopped wearing makeup and reading blogs and spending time concerned with what others think about me.

I wish I could bottle that feeling up and take it everywhere I go.

The beach, for me (and for most of my family, I’d suspect) is about more than just sitting and taking in the breeze and the sand and the dolphins celebrating the sea.

It’s also a time of renewal.

A group of us were sitting under the shade of the family tent, situated just a few feet from the gulf waters, when a government employee came up, asking questions about the island we frequent: How often do we make the trip? Did last year’s oil spill affect our decision to come? Would we be back?

In the middle of it all, she asked: What do you do while you’re here visiting?

My dad paused and looked at her for a moment before answering.

“This,” he said, nodding around to the five or six of us gathered in chairs. “We don’t do anything but this.”

And it’s true.

We don’t go to the beach to shop. We don’t frequent the seafood restaurants or rent bikes or kayaks or canoes. We don’t ride jet skis or fish aboard rented boats. These days we don’t really build sandcastles or play too many games.

Mostly we just sit.

We read.

We talk.

We walk to the water, swim for a little while, then make our way back to shore, where we wait for the sun to dry us off before entering the water again.

We also resolute.

I was born into a family of dreamers and doers, and they do a lot of their dreaming at the beach.

Together we talk about ways we can be better. We share our thoughts on being Christ-followers, on what that looks like in our neighborhoods and at our church and in our homes.

We don’t really make lists or write out bulleted resolutions; instead we just share our ideas, and we encourage each other to not let those dreams die when we arrive back home where laundry and to-do lists and naysayers are waiting.

I think that’s what I was missing last summer.

June is summer’s January.

And last year, I didn’t get a chance to sit and be quiet, to reevaluate my life and my spirituality.

I know some people love the beach for its food, its recreation, it outlet shops.

But the beach we visit doesn’t offer all of those things, and I am glad.

I am grateful for a reprieve free of distractions.

I am grateful for just sitting and being and the peace that it brings.

I am grateful for the closeness of the Father and the bigness of Him by the sea.

I am grateful for a family of persistent dreamers and doers.

I am grateful for the opportunity to travel miles down the road to my own peaceful paradise, to a place where I can ditch the masks and the commitments and the burdens and for a while, just be me.

I am lucky, this I know.