Vitamin Ocean

OCEAN

The tide’s coming in.
Waves rush towards me in what feels like slow motion
but is truly an irresistible pull.
I feel the pull in my body –
know that from where I am sitting
it’s only a matter of time till I am covered in foam.
Yet I am not afraid.
I see a figure, lone, standing in the water,
Beckoning me to come and follow Him.
He is all radiant, even as He appears sodden and spent like the rest of us,
and I know
there’s nowhere I’d rather be than with Him, in the waves.
So I rise,
I stand,
I begin walking toward Him, to the water.

The first touch of my feet to that Ocean is cold,
but somehow pleasant; awakening in me
sensations I had long forgotten to feel.
I walk on. Step after step, I draw nearer.
The water grows deeper.
I am aware that I may be called to submerge, and that if I do,
the shock of the cold, the transition from
this life above water
to a new and strange existence below it
might be painful.
I think of birth, of rebirth, of how I’ll learn to breathe all over again,
and I am not afraid.
I do believe the One calling me
has lived in both worlds, and will teach me
how to do the same.
Together, we’ll swim and rise again, following the currents of this boundless Ocean
as it swirls and heaves in a moving picture
too broad for me to comprehend
but compelling enough to draw me in,
into the delights of experiencing the waves firsthand.
And that, my own experience in this un-knowable Ocean,
is all that I have longed for,
anyway.