When Waves Crash Down
When I was a little boy I lived near a beach. So close in fact, that my mother would take
me, my brother and whatever friends wanted to go on a daily basis. When school let out for the summer, we knew
that the beach would be our next stop.
It was a place where we could run free, where we could swim, where we
could take a few hours and just do pretty much whatever we wanted. There were sun, surfing and sand
castles. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way
to grow up. But then something changed…
I was probably 12 or 13 when my love for the beach
changed. A group of us had gone out to
this certain strip of coast where the park contained pavilions for grilling,
tables for eating and nets for a little beach volleyball. The surf was a little rough that day, but
nothing I hadn’t faced before. A couple
of friends and I decided to do a little body surfing before heading back to the
park area for burgers. If you haven’t
done this particular beach event before, basically it involves catching a wave
as if your body is the surfboard. If you
catch the wave just right, you can ride it all the way to shore.
We were having a lot of luck catching waves that day. They were higher than normal, which made them
even more rideable. I probably went out
5 or 6 times with no issue. I would
catch the wave I liked, ride it to shore, and then swim back out to catch
another one. I didn’t even notice that
the seas were getting a little choppier and the undertow was slowly gaining
strength.
With all of the fun we were having, I didn’t want to
stop. So out I went to catch another
wave. I could see it off in the
distance, slowly rolling toward shore. I
set myself, ready to pounce at just the right time in order to catch the break
just right. And when the moment came, I
leapt into action, kicking my feet and paddling my arms waiting for that exact
second when the momentum of the wave would carry me the rest of the wave.
I didn’t time it right however. I missed it by a fraction of second and
instead of breaking in the perfect location, the wave broke right on top of my
head. The force drove me down to the sea
floor and I buckled under the pressure.
In that moment I lost my balance, my composure, and I think I lost my
shorts. You can’t open your eyes in the ocean because
you can’t see anything and the salt water will burn. I was under the water. I didn’t know which way was up, and the fear
overtook every ounce of my being.
I have heard that some people say that your entire life flashes
before your eyes when you are in a near death situation. Now, I don’t remember that, because I was too
busy grasping for the surface of the water.
What was probably just a few seconds quickly began to feel like an
eternity. The oxygen that I had held to
catch the wave was all but gone and I needed more immediately. My lungs burned, my head was filled with
thoughts of the end. My arms were
flailing about looking for the surface, finding nothing but more water. This was it, the end. I was going to die.
That didn’t happen of course. Just when I thought I could hold my breath no
longer I hit the beach and popped up above the surface of the water. I sucked in as much oxygen as my lungs could
hold and stood up to walk away from the water.
After a few quick breaths and a minute to calm down and assess the
situation I realized that my friends were still waiting for the next wave to
carry them in. The crowded beach was
full of people going about their business.
Little kids were wading in the shallows.
Girls in bikinis were flipping over.
Men jogged right past me.
No one had even noticed my distress. This horrible event that almost killed me
wasn’t even on the radar screen of the hundreds of people using that particular
beach on that particular day. Making
matters worse is that my mother was in the water, talking to a friend, not 25
feet away. She hadn’t noticed
either. My thought process became
confused. Maybe this wasn’t the near
death experience I had made it out to be in my mind. Maybe, just maybe, I was overreacting.
So I did the unthinkable.
I got up, walked back into the water and swam back out to catch another
wave. This experience had to be an
anomaly. Something had happened in that
last wave that couldn’t happen again. It
was just the perfect storm of everything going wrong. I determined to do it again if for no other
reason than to prove to myself that I was perfectly capable of riding any wave
I liked.
The next wave came, I leapt again, kicked again, paddled
again and wouldn’t you know it, the DAMN WAVE BROKE RIGHT ON TOP OF MY HEAD
AGAIN!!! It was a repeat of what had
happened not 5 minutes earlier. I
tumbled, struggled and reached for the surface that wasn’t there. Just like before I badly needed air, and just
like before I got it at what I believed was the last possible second. Around me, no one noticed. The kids splashed, the runners ran, the girls
tanned. That was it for the beach and
me. I was done.
Since that day the fear of drowning is one of the worst I have. It hasn’t stopped me from jumping into a pool
or wading in the ocean or even scuba diving, but I am certainly less likely to
go to a beach nowadays. Ever since that
event I have always said that I hate the beach.
I blame the heat, the salt and the dirt, (sand is dirt, I don’t care
what you say) but in reality it is comes down the beach almost being my
murderer, and I don’t need to stare my attempted murdered eye to eye ever
again.
Waves Aren’t Always
Water
I am writing about fear today, because I have been with
Operation Stand By Your Man for about 6 weeks now, and one of the repeating
themes I see is just how afraid spouses, fiancés and girlfriends are to be
without their significant other for any period of time. I am not talking about having a dislike for
those alone times. I am talking about a
genuine fear that these ladies have.
They fear that their man isn’t going to come home the same, or isn’t
going to come home at all. They fear
that they are going to grow so far apart that reunion won’t be possible. They fear that going through a deployment may
be possible for everyone except them. It
is such a problem that this fear runs their lives and it is the evidence of
something so much deeper. It is the
evidence that fear is in control in many more areas of their lives than just
their relationships.
In the emails we receive I have read time and time again
words like, “I can’t,” “It’s hard,” or “I don’t know what I am going to
do.” Other phrases such as “He is my
world,” or “I love him with everything that I am,” also resonate. I am not saying that loving your significant
other is bad, but loving them with EVERYTHING that you are is clearly taking
something away from you. It is causing
you to doubt and to fear the life you were meant to live.
You see, there is an independent spirit inside each of us
that is doused whenever fear starts to take hold. It is that little voice inside of us that
tells us we aren’t good enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough. It is the internal struggle that pulls us
away from our dreams and back into the average.
It is the self-doubt that leads us to choose the easy path rather than
the one that challenges us in ways we never thought possible.
From a man’s perspective woman struggle with this
self-doubt, with this fear, a lot more than we do. I am not sure that it is really true, but it
is outwardly expressed more in women than it is in men. It comes across in some silly ways, like
when you think an outfit makes you look fat or when you incessantly clean the
house more than you normally do because the mother-in-law is coming for a
visit. The problem is that when you are
a military wife, everything is magnified, simply because of the life we
lead. That’s when the fear can overtake.
I will admit right here and now that my fear of the beach is
nothing compared to the fear of failure that so many of us struggle with and
struggle with even more when our spouses aren’t there to love on us and
reassure us that everything is going to be ok.
My fear of the crashing waves is nothing compared the fear of crashing
and burning each of us face when we want to step out of our comfort zone and
try something new. My fear of gasping
for air is nothing compared to those of you gasping for a fresh breath because
you live a life that is full of the fear you don’t realize is dragging you down
everyday.
My wife said something profound the other day after
church. She said, “How do you know you
can’t walk on water, if you are too afraid to get out of the boat?” So I put that same question to you. How do you know you can’t go back to school,
if you don’t tell self-doubt that you are smart and go register? How do you know you can’t survive a
deployment, if you don’t push the loneliness aside and tell yourself that the
time apart is an opportunity to make yourself better? How do you know you can’t save your marriage,
if you don’t throw away the feelings of failure and pick up more productive
tools that can help you do what is seemingly impossible? How do you know what you can and can’t do, if
you are too afraid to even give it a try?
You don’t, and if you give in to the fear, you will never be amazed at
what you can accomplish.
I have come to the conclusion that most people live average
lives because they believe they are average.
Now, I happen to believe that Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and
their families, and all of the other service members in this nation have
already taken one step beyond average.
But just being in the situations we are in gives fear that opportunity
to sneak in even more. We can’t allow
that. We can’t tell ourselves that we
aren’t good enough. We can’t tell
ourselves that average is all we can expect.
We have to want more. We have to
fight for it. We have to face the fear
head on and crush it.
To be honest it is all about perspective. Fear, running our lives, is all about how we
see ourselves. If we see ourselves as
average or worse, then fear has won. If
we see ourselves as better, then we can defeat the fear, but it is all about perspective. Below is a video that I think can lend a lot
to the view of perspective. Watch it in
its entirety to see what I mean.
Now is the time to change your perspective and to face your
fears. Now is the time to take charge
and to fight against being average. Now
is the time to show fear that you are the boss of your life and that it has no
place holding you back. As strong
independent women and the significant others of America’s fighting men you are
already part of the way there, just get it in your head that you can push the
rest of the way.
One more note…from a guy’s perspective, confidence is a hell
of a lot sexier than fear. What I mean
by that is this. We are not more
attracted to a woman who is constantly telling that she can’t live without us
and is fawning all over us as if her entire existence is based solely on our
opinion of her. We are more attracted to
the strong, independent woman that you can be.
Strong is way more sexy than servile.
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