Greetings from our little family vacation in a state that isn't land locked. We have spent this week in a quiet water community in Florida. Just before we started our journey down here, I commented on how in Kentucky, it gets hot and summer arrives, but summer never really happens. I grew up on the Jersey Shore, not that deplorable show, but the real shore were summer days were spent on the beach and long warm summer nights were always spent with friends in the back yard or on the boardwalk. Summer for me is a way of life not merely a change in season. That way of life hasn't happened in my experience in KY, maybe it happens if you aren't living on a mostly empty campus and have friends who live off campus, but we really don't. There are less pools and no ocean so that makes it difficult.
Last night I sat out on my mom's dock doing a little reading for summer classes and that's when it hit me. Summer happens here, we have been out on the boat, sitting poolside, beach, barbeques, and family. There is something about that salt air that you get even the faintest hints of when you live near the water that is just life giving. I started thinking more about water and my deep connection to it and longing for it. When people ask how I like KY I almost always respond I miss the ocean. It's not just the ocean though, it's the bay, it's life in a "water community", it's the pools that weren't mine but were open to me any time I wanted to use them. It's safe to say I love the water. I love to be in the water or even just near the water. It gives me life...
That's when it hit me, maybe my connection with water is even deeper than that of my physical self. Maybe it is all the way down in the depths of my soul. I have always said I feel so close to God when I am near the water. It's the first place I can remember really experiencing God in a way that filled me with awe and wonder. This week as I spent time doing the things that are familiar and make me comfortable and happy I noticed how much water just makes me feel whole.
It isn't a new idea, Baptism uses water for a reason. That's when it hit me maybe water is so life giving to me, because deep down in some unconscious place it makes me remember my Baptism. My identity not just as a girl who loves when summer happens and all the water it brings but as a beloved child of God.
There is something Holy about water.
Today I am grateful for water, what it symbolizes, the life it gives and the rest it brings.
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