The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance. – Psalm 16:6

I am at the end of the dock

My favorite place to be on earth

The gentle rhythmic sloshing of waves against the boat ramp

Reminding me I will miss the boat again this year

The state now requiring a license

Jonathan has not had time to get yet

It’s a minor disappointment

Still I can’t help closing my eyes

Imagining the thrill of riding over waves

The air in my face, my hair whipped back

There’s nothing quite like it

The feeling of freedom and joy

But part of being an adult

Is learning to live with disappointment

I know I could study and pass the test myself

But I’ve no real desire to drive the boat

When Jonathan is a much better seaman

I’d rather be a passenger

They may be able to get the boat next week

But by then I will be gone

Flying home back to work, still much to be done

Quite literally missing the boat

As I sit here contemplating

That which is gone

I run the risk of missing

That which is right in front of me

A mindset shift

If I focus too much on that missing boat

I may miss the yellow daylilies that have bloomed just today

The morning glory hidden amongst the reeds

The sheer quiet beauty of this place

And I wonder where else in life

I have wasted time missing that which is gone

Rather than seeing what is

Quite a lot I think

Not for the first time I think of Cassandra

Fated to know the future and have no one believe her

I think her fate is worse than Sisyphus

There’s something noble about pushing a rock up a hill after all

But who wants to be the girl nobody believes?

I wonder how Cassandra learned to live with her curse

You can’t really stop seeing what is right in front of you

But you can stop sharing it

As I have learned to do

For a long time I blamed myself

Perhaps it’s my delivery

Perhaps if I shared it with less emotion

With more words and more research

But I have learned you cannot make people see

What they don’t want to see

And if I’m being honest

Some of the time I have been the one closing my eyes and heart

Not wanting to see what is right in front of me

Because that might require a change

I am not yet ready for

I think back to missing the boat

Instead of being bothered by others who miss the boat I am on

I know I should be more concerned about the boats I am missing

The boat to exercise and better health

The boat to boundaries and protecting my time

The boat to Sabbath rest

A woman and her son go kayaking past the dock

He calls out a “hi” seeing me on the dock

And I call back to him

What a sweet picture they are

Maybe today if the wind lets up a little

I will take out the kayak

A motorboat is not the only boat there is

There is also a rowboat and a kayak

Even if the motorboat were here today

We couldn’t take it out safely in this wind

Because sometimes the thing stopping you

Isn’t due to human malice or disinterest

Sometimes it is nature itself

And the God who controls it

Who sets the boundaries in place

I want to learn to say with the Psalmist

The boundaries have fallen for me in pleasant places

To learn to be content with the way things are

The way people are

Rather than trying to change them

To grieve my own sins, to repent

Rather than focusing on the shortcomings of others

For, unlike the fickle and mythical gods of Ancient Greece,

The God we serve, Yahweh, is good

He does not treat us as our sins deserve

Right now he is giving me the gift of a cool wind

On a day that is going to be sweltering later on

A wind that blows where it pleases

So I put down my pen

Enjoying the wind