Sandy Shoes

October 1, 2011

I spent a whole week in Florida on vacation with my husband and friends recently. It was amazing. Ocean, swimming, relaxing, heaven. Of course I packed my running shoes, was looking forward to some runs on the beach which was a first. I wasn’t sure If i could run on the beach, if the sand would be too soft or what that looked like. But it turns out there’s lots of packed, rough, hard sand you can run on if you run down somewhat close to the tide coming in. So I went out for my first run Sunday afternoon just after we watched a breathtaking storm come in off the ocean.
So there was plenty of packed, hard sand to run on. I laced up, left the ipod at home and hit the beach. I listened to the deafening sound of the tide roll in and out, took in the endless sky and I ran down the coast with nothing but ocean and clouds in my view and let myself take it in. There was a lot to take in since this was my first time running on the beach next to the ocean, I was in heaven. As I’m running on the sand I realized that it was, as I have said, hard. It was packed, rough, not the nice, fluffy ‘easy’ sand further away from the tide. Not the sand castle building sand, but this was perfect for running. If I tried running in the soft sand it would make this Much harder, as we’ve all attempted to run in sand and felt like a floundering fish. Like trying to run in quicksand and every step just seems to drag you down.
This made me think of my own life. It always seems that the hard times, those rough patches in my life have always taken me the farthest. When things are easy, or soft, you just flow with it it seems. No urgency, no real drive, just taking it easy. But it’s when things get hard, there is conflict, financial struggles, sickness, that we seem to step up—fight back, get upset—-there is Movement. It is not always noticeable right away as we are in the middle of a struggle, but when you look back you can see how far you’ve come from that pier Waaay in the distance, and I realize how much Longer that would have taken, how much Harder it would have been to try to do on the fluffy sand. It was the hard stuff that got me this far.

And I know the Lord uses those hard times to push us forward, to stir us up, keep us from becoming complacent, cause Movement. Running is movement, but how easy or hard it is is sometimes dependent on the surface we are running on. Are we running on solid, even ground? How is your foundation in your own life? Are you planted on solid, high ground? Or on the sands that will so easily shift and cause you to loose your footing? Keep running, and don’t curse the next trial, but maybe take a second to look back in the midst and see how far it’s taken you……