All-in

Whoever joined together the word smooth with the word sailing?

My ideal sailing adventure—my smooth sailing—would be on a warm, clear and calm ocean…with land always in sight. Warm water says jump in…all-in. I love to flop around in warm water. As a young girl, I secretly wanted to be one of those underwater mermaids at Florida’s Weeki Wachee tourist attraction. Yet I am as much mermaid material as I am a smooth sailor.

For me, clarity while smooth sailing means vision in all directions...with no unexpected encounters. Similarly, underwater clarity means I can avoid creepy creatures above, below and beyond…no surprises. Calm waters invite peace and steadiness without threat of upheaval. However, with sailing, the more squally, the better the adventure. It would seem that my ideal smooth sail is as unrealistic as my mermaid-like, no surprises, risk-avoidant self.

I am a sailor…by marriage only. Though my heart is captivated by the captain, my soul would rather be on land. Curious how often I find myself in conflicting, unpredictable, tumultuous, unfathomable waters. Stretching beyond my comfort zone is an understatement when I have one foot on a moving boat and the other foot on the dock.

Even ashore, the ocean’s disturbing motion lingers long after a sail. I walk unsteadily along the beach avoiding more waves, spray, rocks and other impediments in my path. The unending, obstacle-strewn beach stretches ahead of me like my word for the year, pursue. 

My word, pursue, challenges me to consider how to respond in sailing and in life when rough waters are present. Pursue does not avoid, nor minimize, nor unwillingly tolerate, nor precariously straddle the gulf between all-in and all-out. Pursue weighs the options, decides and then moves onward. Powerful waves surge onto shore…all-in. The retreating water washes back out into the ocean…all-out.

All my previous words for the year have contributed to this time and space where pursue now requests something more of me. My words, like waypoints in sailing, mark progress points made as well as setting the course ahead. Pursue beckons me onward, keeping me on course for this year.

I glance back over my shoulder and notice the waypoints I have passed. At embolden, I asked for God’s help. Our grandson’s three-year old voice whispers through the wind. Jack comforted his howling little brother resisting his car seat and sleep, “It’s okay, Lukey, God will take care of you.” Jack’s simple faith contrasts to Granna’s cautious faith…I keep walking.

Release is where I stumbled over an old pattern of avoiding risk. Radical was the illusive waypoint that renounced all or nothing thinking. Willing acknowledged being on the right path. Just past open, I began noticing little treasures along the way…discarded, broken, insignificant bits of sea glass. A friend’s blog title pleasantly brings me back to the moment at hand as I ‘Gather the Fragments’. The sun is high in the sky; I pursue noticing and collecting the little treasures of fragments, words and insights along the way.

Back at home, I add my journey’s bounty to a container with previous discoveries. As my collection grows bit by bit, so does my gratitude, and my perspective…along with extra fragments of faith. My new, bigger, transparent vase is already half-full. This larger container holds all my assorted pieces together in one place, at one time…all-in.

Breathing lessons

Sailing has been an undeniable family adventure for more than thirty-five years. Angling through waves, surfing swells with dolphin, hearing the voluminous gush before spotting the spouting behemoth, diving into the warm sun-streaked waters, lulling into slumber at anchor….STOP! Who really believes that stuff?

When the ocean churns turbulent green, so do I. Traditionally, I have invoked seasickness as the perfect excuse to avoid the nautical threats outside my comfort zone, the discomforts of weather and sea conditions, the expanse of the open ocean, and well, just going green while being trapped aboard until terra firma is reached. For me, sailing, not unlike confronting fears, is about breathing deeply…inhaling fresh wind and freedom and exhaling overwhelming motion and e-motion.

One time the fog engulfed us as we were heading back to the marina. We couldn’t see more than five feet around us. While opagueness engulfed us, different-sized foghorns blasted from vessels about us. Our modest chartered sailboat was not equipped with radar, only a broken foghorn. We were a silent and indefensible target out in the open. Kids and I as crew spaced ourselves around the boat on lookout while sailor husband navigated and worked to repair our foghorn. “Whale!” shouted voices from a very close boat. We saw its fluke and felt its wake as we steered past the splash and the other boat. Through the fog, beyond the green, the wide open yielded the wonder of a whale sighting. Breathe in family, exhale resistance.

Sailing, the ocean, and venturing out into the open—from behind walls, from underneath guilt, from within captivity and through fears—challenges my excuses, and my pattern of self-protection. The words of a fellow struggler, an author, push back: “here-time asks me to do the hardest of all: just open wide and receive.” I lingered long in the motionless, soothing safety of a soak tub. Warmth and peace blanketed me like the foamy bubbles. Receive…the word drifts from mind to open fingertips as I lay suspended, arms floating still, palms up. What was I open to receive? Inhale...exhale…inhale…exhale.

Pondering an invitation to reconnect with a friend from the past, I walked the beach looking out over the horizon of endless ocean. The ebb and flow of swells undulated through the depths forming the waves that tumbled into shore at me. What was she wanting of me? I pulled back from the surf’s intrusion like I retreated from my friend’s invitation to meet. Later, lunch with my friend from the past was simply an open heart-connection between two women having traveled similar paths. Breathe in acceptance, exhale judgment.

Not too long ago, my husband-captain and I set sail to Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California. The winds were pleasantly brisk. By the time we were more than halfway to the island, the wind and waves were beating against us. And everything went green. I lay down in the cockpit staving off the greenness and contempt for sailing, the weather, the ocean, the captain, and myself for choosing to be out in the open. The howling wind and tumultuous swells continued into the night while at anchor…as did my nausea. Choose to inhale peace; choose to exhale helplessness.

The next morning was crisp, clear and breath-less. My husband-captain brought me hot tea in bed and we stayed under the covers reading until the sun warmed the air. On our return, I stretched out on the cockpit cushion in the warmth of sunshine avoiding the wafting smell of diesel (which also makes me green). My husband set our course, adjusted the mainsail, tweaked the autopilot…while I purred like a cat in her favorite sun-lit spot. I awoke to a caring captain asking me what I’d like to drink with my lunch. Breathe in love, exhale captivity.

The Perfect Excuse

Sailing makes me sick…so does navigating windy roads, breathing diesel exhaust, reading in a car, or facing backwards in a moving vehicle. These activities top my Urp List. Anyone who has ever experienced nausea or motion sickness can empathetically gag with me.

I married 35 years ago romanticizing sailing as effortless gliding through calm waters. Then, I did not fully grasp that my husband was genetically predisposed to sail. For example, when he was a little boy he put two big blocks of Styrofoam between the legs of a bench, clamped an umbrella to the contraption, drug along an old oar for the rudder, and sailed along the shoreline. Over the years, the idealistic sail was rocked by shifting winds and rough waters in the boat…and out of the boat.

As soon as I could rule out pregnancy (which also made me sick), I used my motion sickness to redirect my family from any twisty-turny activities on land or water. Mother vampire guilt kicked in, “I’m sucking the life out of my family.” Thus was born my perfect excuse for sending the others off without me, “Who wants a green-faced, life-less person along spoiling everyone else’s excursion?” Whoo-hoo! I had the whole house to myself. I stayed in my pajamas till noon, snacked in bed, took use-up-all-the-hot-water showers, ate dessert instead of dinner, read till midnight, and didn’t do the dishes until the sink and counter were fully stacked with dirty ones. Pull-eeez, tell me I’m not the only woman to have perpetrated such crimes in private against her own house rules.

As in pregnancy, I eventually allowed the special indulgences afforded an impaired mother. Again, the perfect excuse was exploited when I accepted priority seating in the cockpit or the front seat of the car. I was excused from galley duty while under way or attending to children in the back seat. Uh-hum, turning around triggers nausea. And when we anchored overnight, I got the open side of the bunk opposite the claustrophobic hull.

But something was not quite shipshape…and queasiness gave way to uneasiness. Like that of a perfect storm where a “rare combination of circumstances aggravate a situation drastically”, my perfect excuse had its own collision course undercurrents. Oh good, more turbulent water stuff.

The currents underneath the perfect excuse were just as unattractive as burping up nausea. Unaware, I had “should” all over myself. I should like sailing because that’s what a supportive wife does. I shouldn’t stay at home without my family because good moms don’t do that. I should be more outgoing. I shouldn’t be so self-absorbed. I should have known better.

I could have easily been sucked into the undercurrent of shoulds with my perfect excuse had not a lifeline—in the form of a question—been tossed my way. In his book, the me I want to be, John Ortberg asks: If I walk down this road, where will it lead in the long run—toward or away from the me I want to be?

What if I didn’t need to create a perfect excuse to mask my honest preferences, dislikes, insecurities, or foibles? Sometimes, I like solitude. I love special attention from my husband and my family. I don’t like Eggs Benedict. There are actually things I love about sailing, but that’s a whole other story for another time. I can go to anxious measures to avoid hurting someone else’s feeling, or when insulating myself from others stinging me. Regret can overwhelm me when I recognize having been preoccupied with the guarding of MY time, MY talents or MY energy. Without hiding behind a perfect excuse, I am exposed and liberated for becoming God’s best version of [me], which is the rest of the title of John Ortberg’s book.