Oceans

I’ve always been drawn towards the ocean. Drawn, terrified by those sneaky rotten jellyfish waiting to burn my awkward limbs, disrupting my peaceful beach combing. Drawn, from the inside of a tiny red fishing boat on the most easterly point of North America, waves lapping up the sides, while I sang my flower child voice to a hoarse whisper into the wind which promised to catch it and carry it away.  Of course this romantic scene is brought to you by the seagull that decided to dump his rotten seaward business in my hair moments after disembarking that little Newfie fishing boat.

Perhaps it was the many childhood trips on the ferry to Prince Edward Island with my Dad, who was green with the tossing waves. Or the death defying trips to the Hopewell Rocks where we absolutely DID NOT try to climb those gigantic flowerpots or get our shoes sucked off our feet in the cool, squishy mud. Maybe it was the trips to Shediac beginning with fried everything in a paper bowl loaded with ketchup and followed up with mountains of ice cream and talks of bungie jumping but whatever it is, there is just something about the rhythmic crashing of waves to grainy sand or beaten rocks, the vast expanse of various blues bleeding in to each other, the deafening loud silence of crashing waves that forces away my brain’s distractions and calls to me.

There is a safety in it’s wide open loudness that beacons me to laugh, scream, cry, play, yell. It challenges me, “Go ahead- give it to me!” and I’ll be honest, I find Jesus here.  Maybe it’s that the desire to control it all, is lost on the ocean.

So you’ll understand my struggle with Hillsong United’s song ‘Oceans’ when it first came out.  The song sounded so pretty. I loved the ocean. I knew Peter’s story well, where his faith finds him jumping out of the boat towards Jesus and his humanity finds him sinking. But I’d always read this with a condescending tone, if only Peter hadn’t lost his faith, if only he’d kept his eyes on Jesus.

The first time I heard the song I was watching a group of children dance to it and I couldn’t help myself, I kept asking “Can they possibly know what they are singing?”  I would hear congregations sing it and I couldn’t get past myself ” Do they know what they are saying?!” The truth is I just couldn’t utter the words myself.

You see I was starting to grow up, I’d had a bit of life under my belt by 2012 and I knew that actually praying for and asking God to take you deeper into the ocean of life experiences that are uncontrollable, well that’s just plain scary. I’d experienced a few crashing waves, ones I was even certain might overtake me and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to ask for that again. If the oceans of life were a “God test” I was pretty confident one of those waves would come along at some point and I’d fail. For a girl not a fan of failure, like don’t start what you can’t finish really well, this didn’t seem like a theme song for me.

And then I was in Atalanta Georgia and God, through a different singer, and a different place in time dropped me to my knees. Though until that point I wouldn’t have asked that God give me overwhelming experiences, he had proved himself faithful to me that far.  And actually that is what I love about walking with Jesus. As much as I hate giving over what I don’t even actually have a grasp on, when I do, I hear him say “Go ahead!- Give it to me!” and it might be a snotty cry, or a temper tantrum of emotion running but the oceans are different when I’m certain God’s got it, because I can’t, and that he’s guiding it all, that I can trust him, that I am his.  It is here that I get it, the freedom of not being in control but trusting the one who is. And so that’s why he calls me out to water, not to pass or fail, but to learn about being safe in his presence.

So I can sing it now, the song, and oh what it does to my heart to do so. He does call me out into those deep waters that most assuredly from time to time will knock me off my feet. But calls me out so that I can learn what it means to rest in trusting Him regardless of what is going on around me. Not to test me. And then when the waves crash around me I tuck myself up in his arms as best I can and trust him, because I’m learning about resting in his presence. And when they calm again we play on the beach, splash in the water and watch the sunset paint pinks and blues across the sky. I haven’t failed, I’m learning, I can go ahead and give it to him.