I am reading a book ( Strong Women, Soft Hearts by Paula Rinehart) right now, and this morning a chapter about how we deal with pain struck me personally. She is a counselor of women, and has a lot of insight into the way our hearts work and particularly how God can mend them when we begin to close them down because of past hurts..

She referred to how we deal with emotional pain as riding a wave through the surf. Having one son who still thrills to the experience, and having often spent hours at the beach watching him take what appeared to me to be a scary ride through a high patch of water rising seemingly out of nowhere, I only now realize that may have provided me a model to deal with things that appeared suddenly threatening in my own life.

He waited, poised and expectant, for whatever might appear, sometimes sitting patiently on his board for what seemed like hours. When the wave appeared, he was ready, and faced the challenge with the security that he would turn this into a thrilling adventure. Indeed, he always came out on the other side with a look of triumph all over his face. Even when the wave got the better of him and toppled his board and threw him off, he looked as though he had learned something about how to tackle the next one.

As I look back on my lifetime of waves from out of nowhere, I am aware that what looks like and feels like overwhelming pain is often just a challenge to take a ride on an unknown vehicle. It appears from nowhere and often disappears into nowhere, but you have an opportunity to be beaten up by it, or to merge with it and see where it takes you. I am grateful for a relationship with my Creator that has helped me chose to ride the wave, rather than turn my back on it and hope I would survive the force of it hitting me square on.  I hope at the end of my life to have the same expression I so often saw on my son’s face at the end of that ride in the surf….Wow! I made it, and that was the most amazing and exhilarating adventure ever!