It’s been grey lately. Like, Seattle grey. Rain keeps falling and everything feels damp, even inside. Combine that with the life’s busyness and it has been weeks since we’ve been to the beach.

I realize that isn’t odd for most people. But when you are a beach girl who lives in Hawaii, it’s more than strange. It’s almost tragic.

When we packed up on Saturday morning, hoping to find a parking spot at a favorite lagoon, it felt long overdue. We watched the clouds as we drove west, silently praying that we’d find sun.

Parking. Check.
Sun. Looked promising.
Blanket out, chairs down, toes in the sand. Done.

And yet, it wasn’t enough. I thought it would be. I love the beach. How when the sun hits your skin in this tropical land it gets all the way to your bones. Warm, hot, a little scorching. Wrinkles and skin cancer be damned. It feels good.

But still, it wasn’t enough.

That day, I knew the water would be brisk. Not for tourists, but for me. After a few years here your blood changes. The fluid in your veins learns the difference between 77 and 80.

I didn’t think it would happen, not to me. That first winter I dove in the water, laughing at the locals on the sidelines who thought it was too cold to swim. And now, while I go in year-round, I can’t stay in as long in the winter before goose bumps overtake my arms and even my liver starts to shiver.

I wasn’t up for snorkeling. I knew I wouldn’t last. But the water pulled me. A blew up my bright pink inner-tube, and walked in up to my ankles. Silver fish flashed as the water licked the shore. I had to take my time. Inch by inch, letting the next part of my body get used to the chill. And then, all at once, I was there. Floating. My legs dangling, my hands paddles to take me to the rocky outcropping where yellow and black convict tang flitted away from my shadow.

That was it. That’s what I needed. In an instant, my soul was filled. The water silenced growing uncertainty about what the future holds.

As Erik and I walked along the shore, I could put words to it.

“I forgot how much the water feeds my soul,” I said to him.

He smiled knowingly and said, “I know.”

He’d been trying to get us to the beach for weeks. My agitation had been growing. My discontented heart now a regular guest at our dinner table.

But the ocean waves washed it away that day. As I dropped onto my towel, sand sticking to the gaps between my toes, everything in the world seemed right. And I realized that’s how good God is. He gives us things in this world that feed our souls. That makes us who we are, make us complete. He gives us people, places, feelings, memories. While some theologians would brush their meaning away in favor of hours spent in Scripture, for me, the beach, the waves, the water are holy.

It’s not the Bible. But it’s time. It’s time in God’s presence, and that is what I needed. That day, only the ocean would do. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten this about myself. Water is woven into the very core of by being.

I grew up with a view of Puget Sound. Every summer, I would have to be drug out of my grandparent’s pool when the sun went down. Fishing with my dad. Ferry rides to see family. Hours going up and down between lane lines in my high school swimming pool. Snorkeling.

I have never been far from water. That’s how God created me.

As we left the beach that afternoon, hungry but completely full, I realized I need to pay better attention. My husband knows. My family knows. Some of my friends even know. Why had I been blind to it? Why had I forgotten this essential part of me? What else feeds my soul that I have forgotten about?

If nothing else, I know that no matter where we live, I need water. I need to get in it. I need to paddle on top of it, kick my feet in it, float in boats on top of it. I need it because it feeds my soul and when I get hungry, I get cranky, and nothing seems right until I’m fed.

The ocean may not be feed your soul. But something does. Find out what it is and chase it, because we’ve all spent too long being hungry.