My "Ocean Journey" Has Begun

The Walt Disney movie Finding Nemo is about a clown fish who goes halfway around the world in search of his son. In one of the scenes an ocean current carries the father and a friend to his desired destination in search of his son. All he has to do is swim into the current and it takes him there. To be sure, it is far away. But once he's aboard the steady stream of warm water, that's it. With patience, like magic and almost without effort, he arrives.

For some reason this scene keeps replaying over and over in my mind. I haven't watched the movie in a long time. But for the last few weeks it has, without effort, replayed itself in my mind again and again. 

But there is a variation to this scene when I see it in my mind's eye. In it, I am there in the ocean with the current flowing just within my reach. Sometimes it is behind me. Other times, beside or in front of me. But the significant difference is that it is ever present before me. No matter where in the ocean I may be at any given moment, the current is always accessible. I am never so far that I cannot reach it. It is simply always there.

Yet the effort to enter its flow is mine to make. I cannot accidentally swim into it or enter therein by chance. Only by consciously choosing to enter may I do so.

What if life is really like this? What if there really is such a warm, safe place that once entered into, will take us, seeming without effort, to where we want to go? 

I admit I have guile. For I know that such a path actually does exist. I do not question it like I used to. For I have been led to this path.

Before finding it though I have spent all my adult life swimming a line parallel to this ocean current, in search of it, occasionally entering it and being carried along by it's graceful flow, until it spits me out during some turn, some zig or zag. 

At least that's how I see it. But I know in reality it's me who has left the current, again and again, often swimming into, then out of, its warm embrace.

It's the guidance I've been searching for for almost as long as I can remember.

Have you ever known a person who has it all together? A person for whom life comes easy? Someone who knows what he wants and seemingly without effort obtains it? Such a person doesn't equivocate or vacillate. People like this are decisive and full of self-confidence. They are quick to laugh, or when appropriate, to cry. They just seem well put together. Some of these, I believe, are being carried by the current toward their destination. These people are full of energy and light and they light the way for others.

I have never been that person. I learn my lessons the hard way. Not because I want to. I just do. It seems to be my chosen lot. At least until now.

I don't think I've ever sleepwalked in my life. But I have been sleepwalking through life. My eyes have been closed to things around me. Then suddenly a wall appears before me. Bam! I feel it before I see it. Story of my life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not fishing for pity. I use to. But not anymore. 

After all, I have known for a long time I've been a sleepwalker. But I have also known there had to be a better way. I knew there was a better way! I just couldn't find it.

But not for a lack of searching. 

Being a book person, I have looked for a better way along the shelves of many new and used book stores wherever I've lived or traveled. I could spend hours at a time looking for that one book that would give me internal peace, only to leave empty-handed and feeling empty inside.

Or I would leave with a handful of books, only to never read them. 

But I have searched in many books for answers to the questions of life. I have read many self-help books over the years, trying to fill the emptiness in my soul. It never would be filled through those books, though.

I have also filled many journal pages. They were never about the happenings and memories of the day. Instead, those pages were filled with a desperate hunger, a searching quest for an end to the internal strife I suffered for years.

One such question I pondered on paper was, "Am I stupid?" It makes me cringe thinking about it now. I spent days on this one, possibly weeks, furiously writing out all the evidence for and against, checking against this known fact and that one, ultimately coming to a happy conclusion. I was healed! 

At least until a short while later--probably a few hours--when once again, my mood sunk. 

And so it went with other self-inflicted labels. Off they came, one by one, until I could find no more. And though I did experience some healing, there was always something that remained. 

Except for my wife. She would not remain. And who could blame her? I was too busy trying to fill the hole in my soul to be too concerned with her.

Ditto my second wife. 

But I've digressed.

I'm no longer sleepwalking though life. My eyes have been opened. I have entered the warm embrace of the ocean current again. And I know how to stay inside its safe confines now.

It began with this painful opportunity.

Then the hole in my soul was healed.

I was given little choice, really. It's hard to stay sleepwalking for long when you are handed your life back by your wife, who in effect says, "Uh-uh. Yeah, that life I had with you? I don't think I can stomach it anymore." (These are my words, my interpretation of her actions. She would be mortified at the thought of saying something this hurtful.)

So here I am. I've been awakened, blessed to be carried by the ocean current to a new destination. A grand destination I cannot imagine.

I know there will be times when I will exit the safe hold of the current. That's life and I'm human. But I also know that through God's grace that same pathway will always be in reach. 

Every post I publish I do so with ambivalence. The challenge for me is to not focus on myself. How to accomplish such a thing when I am including such personal details I really don't know. I can only trust the grace of God that I may accomplish this. For I know that as I trust myself I fail. And as I trust in Him I succeed. 

*His pure love is the destination. His word is the ocean current.