Crossing the Ocean

One of the many adventures I’ve taken in my life was when I spent eight months aboard a commercial fishing vessel in the Gulf of Mexico working as a navigator and deckhand.  It was a unique experience and I believe when I had my first encounter with God. 

Up until that point in my life I was an angry young woman, struggling to raise two babies on my own, practically a baby myself at just twenty-one years old. I was scared, but I didn’t have the luxury to be scared or lick my wounds, I had two lives dependent upon me.  I could no longer continue my education and found myself in a little fishing town with no decent prospects for sustainable employment, so I took a chance and turned to the water. 

I’d been on a few recreational boats by this time, living in a Florida beach town, but I’d never been on one that went so far out that the shoreline would disappear.  I can’t explain the feeling that consumed me as I stood on the stern of that boat watching the Panacea shoreline dip in the horizon with the sunset.  I knew my life was going to change, again, but I had no idea what sort of adventure or hardships lay ahead for me. The only thing I knew was that in order for me to break away from the life I had, I had to sail into the unknown.   

The unknown was much bigger than me, much bigger than anything I had planned, expected or imagined, much like the ocean.  We think we can understand the size and scope of it vastness, but that’s from the perspective of the shoreline.  Once you get out past where the land disappears, the ocean becomes bigger and you finally see yourself as the tiny drop of existence you truly are.  You also find out that you’re not in control of as much as you think.  

It’s a scary thing to face mortality.  But, in order to cross the ocean, to venture into the unknown, to experience what you’ve never experienced, you have to have the courage to lose sight of the shore.  “Come what may.”  You don’t know how many times I’ve said those words and had the strength to stand in the face of the unknown and the uncertain, with my shoulders squared and the wind in my face.  Here I am once again, staring out and an ocean of uncertainty watching the storm clouds and the swelling waves, but I’m not so sure I have the courage to say it one more time.   

Here I am twenty-one years later, once again scared and angry facing MORE uncertainty, and in desperate need for another encounter with God. I wonder where this hardship is going to take me and who I will be at the end of it.  Will this be the storm that finally capsizes me, or will my stabilizers keep me afloat one more time.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Searching For Home

In my journey to look ahead, I find myself immersed in deep thoughts this morning, a bit heavy too.  As I watch the dew glisten in the morning sunlight out my office window, I can’t help but think how connected I am with the world, yet disconnected at the same time. I am loved, yet unloved; appreciated, yet unappreciated; wanted, yet unwanted.

I’m not going to say I’ve always felt different because we’re all different, we’re all unique; no one is the same as anyone else.  Our life journeys are also unique.  But, I have always felt I didn’t belong, always on a road to somewhere else, always searching for a place to call home.  I lived in the same house for the last twenty years, but it never felt completely like home, though it was the first real home I ever had.  It was safe, which was also something I never had, and I cherish and miss it greatly.  It felt content, regular, routine, familiar and even happy.  I can close my eyes at any moment and smile as I hear the sound of my children’s laughter as they ran down those familiar halls.  My children are grown now, those halls are empty and don’t belong to me anymore.  But even through all those years, all those happy memories, there was a part of me that still yearned for home, still searched for where I belonged, still desired to be whole. 

I felt guilty for so long for not being satisfied with my lot in life, like something was wrong with me, that I was broken, perhaps even a bit rebellious for being so selfish. I mastered the art of crucifying my flesh, to suppress my wants and desires and live up to the expectations of those I loved.  Now I sit here this morning in my new apartment, free, but still not at home. 

I feel like I found home earlier this summer as I stood on a beach.  The earth shifted beneath me and the illusion of reality sharpened and I saw myself connected with everything – the sky, the water, the rocks, the air, the sun and the earth itself.  It was strange, because I’d never been in that place before, but in that moment I felt I had come home.  The feeling took several weeks to leave me.

Since that moment on the last day of May, I’ve been trying to understand what happened in that particular place in time and I can’t find an answer.  Was it the place?  Was it the company?  Was it the fact that it was the first time I ever did anything purely for myself?  Was it a state of mind?  Or was it all an illusion?  These questions plague me and I have no answer, only that I’m sitting here at my desk in the moment in time and all I want is to go home.  But where is home?  Is it in a place or a state of being?  I can move locations, eventually, but is that the answer?  When I think of all the obstacles that prevent me from physically going to that place, it literally takes my breathe away, but I’m not sure if that fear is from the thought of moving across the country, or moving and finding what I’m looking for wasn’t in a place at all… and still left feeling lost.

I don’t know, all I know is that I have to live today in this moment, in the place, and decide what to do today and to what plans should I prepare for tomorrow.  Again, I don’t know the answers, but I’m learning to eliminate some of the questions.  I do know this hole in my soul isn’t connected to a person – not one I’ve left or one I may never see again or one I may meet in the future.  I’m not waiting on anyone, and I know no one is waiting on me.  This is my journey.  This is my life.  This is my soul.  Who knows where I’ll be next week.  I feel pulled, I feel drawn, I feel compelled; I just don’t know to what… yet.  I may just stuff some clothes in a back pack and disappear into the wilderness.