Ebbing and Flowing Through the Punches

As pressing as our daily challenges might seem, there’s something comforting in knowing that ocean waves have ebbed and flowed in similar ways every day for billions of years on our planet. It reminds us that we’ll make it through even the hardest times.

There’s something mesmerizing I’m watching ocean waves. This weekend I’m spending some days at the Oregon Coast, a favorite part of the world, and taking in plenty of the expansive ocean scenes.

so often life’s challenges can seem so pervasive, so inescapable, and seemingly impossible to look past. I remember a moment when I was in the hospital after my Roth and thankfully my final brain surgery. At that moment, I had lost the ability to talk with no clear idea of how long it would take to regain that ability if ever. I was thinking that night about what some of my high school classmates might have been doing in that moment rather than being in a hospital bed trying to figure out how I was going to take the AP Literature test without being able to read.

So I have some sense of how impossible certain moments can seem. But something I learn from watching ocean waves is that, without fail, they still wash up against the beach. They still rise and fall with the tides. And they still leave me willing calmer and more hopeful.

I survived that night and eventually relearned how to talk and read. I took and passed that AP Literature test, which I am so grateful for. But I know sometimes we aren’t quite that fortunate. Sometimes we have to deal with disappointments as well as misfortune. We can still look to the next morning. We can still hope and work toward good things to come in our lives. And we can still cling to those good moments each day. And generally, somehow, the morning sunlight of the next day shines the brighter.