My heart is an ocean

I fill with youthful excitement the moment I see the cos-way bridge that makes it's way to Port Aransas. Fun childhood memories flood my mind of swimming and laughter and sunburns. Catching waves with my Grammy, sand stuck in bathing suits and hot sandwich family dinners. It makes me smile. I am grateful for remembrance.

The beach, the ocean, the sand, the salty air....all of it nourishes a deep place in my soul.

I took in this view yesterday.
I love the feeling of sand between my toes. It makes me feel nine and happy and for a moment makes me feel as though life is simple and not full of complex relationships or responsibility.
We only went for part of the day yesterday. But it was enough to fill the ache that lives inside of this beach-loving girl. And it was also Tommy's first experience to encounter sand and the ocean. Something I've been hoping to share with him.
He loved it - which might be an understatement. As I played in the waves with my son and watched him dance in the water with utter glee and joy, I had to stop and thank God for giving us such a child who seems to enjoy all of the things that both Todd and I do individually. What a wondrous gift our little boy is.
We played in the water and made a tide pool.
We played in the waves. That was the best part - Tommy loved the crashing force of water hitting him as we waited for the next wall of seawater to come our way. It felt good to laugh. It felt good to share and joy with him in something that means so much to me.
I watched my husband and son hand in hand walk across the coastline. I melted as I remembered dreaming about such days when I was nine. Wondering what it might be like to be married with my own family and enjoying the beach. My heart felt soft and tender - I soaked up every ounce of beach time as we played in the ocean together. I was thirsty for it and I didn't want to miss a moment.
My heart feels like an ocean as I look at this picture of my husband and I. There could be many words, but as I see this, I just feel full and quiet.
I wrote our names in the sand.
Two names that God joined together. We talked about that this weekend - how evident it is sometimes that we were just created to love the other. And even how sometimes it feels like we couldn't be more different and what was God thinking? Marriage is like that I suppose.

The weekend was full of hard and real conversations. It was full of intimacy and connection and recommitting to talk about those hard and real things. After all, it is in those things that we are most afraid to share and then do - that we are most deeply known and most deeply loved.

The beach felt like both the finale and the beginning to some great beautiful thing. A place where we could almost reach out and touch God at the horizon, where ocean met sky. I wanted to run to Him - to thank Him, to cry, to be held.

Though my husband's arms wrapped tightly around me instead. My little boy giggling as he poured out buckets of seawater onto sand.