Maybe They Got Something Right...

Yesterday I felt the incredible urge to take a long drive by myself and find an adventure. So I did. 

I didn't know where I was going, but I knew that I would know my destination when I arrived. Somehow, I knew it would either be the ocean, or someplace where I would find myself surrounded by nature.

But the goal was to get lost. And I did. Sort of.

I can’t lie. The place where I stopped was actually a somewhere I've been before—a little park on the North Carolina boarder. However, because I had never driven there myself before, and was always in a car full of friends, I had hardly ever paid attention to the drive, so I didn't think I would be able to find my way back.

But somehow, even when I felt like I was entirely lost, I ended up at that same park. It took me about an hour to get there, but it was worth it. I got out and walked through the marshy grass until I found the water. Two long strips of land jutted out into the water, and I walked up and down the edges of those strips, taking pictures of the trees and the birds and the flowers. What mystified me the most were the stone puzzle pieces that lined the edge of the shore, and could clearly be seen going all the way down into the water. It looked like God’s jigsaw puzzle.

At the end of one of the strips of land, I noticed that there were these miniature cliffs. The water had eroded the land so that one could step down from these tiny cliffs into the clay and rock bottom below. Lowing myself down, I walked below the cliffs until the clay became too slippery for me to keep walking. So I climbed back up and sat on a bench.

A boat passed and created a series of waves that forced themselves up over those rocks and into that slippery clay foundation upon which I had just been walking. The waves didn't quite reach where I was sitting, but if I had still been down below the cliffs, I would have been drenched and possibly taken out with the waves. I was amazed by the power of the water and the way that something that had been dry and quiet only a moment ago had been transformed into a bed for the rushing water.

But what I’ll remember most about my little adventure is the way I felt as I sat there. For months now, I've been battling with this feeling of emptiness. I often feel like I've got this big, jagged hole inside of me that can’t be filled no matter what I try to stuff into it.

Most recently I've been attempting to fill it with friendships, yet that simply hasn't worked. But as I sat there, in the quiet, knowing that I was alone with the wind and the waves and the clouded sky, I felt like I could almost feel that gaping hole closing up. Suddenly, for the first time in months, I felt whole again.

I still feel whole. I woke up this morning, not with a feeling of emptiness, but a feeling of being satisfied. I don’t know how long it will last, but maybe the solace of nature was what I needed. Maybe the hole inside of me was noise, the noise of a busy life in a noisy city. Maybe that hole could only be filled with the silence and solace of introspective thoughts and the sounds of God’s nature.

I always thought that those Transcendentalists had gotten something right, and maybe it was that they knew how to be quiet. They knew that one can only really focus on God and focus on one’s self when surrounded by the quiet that only nature can provide.

I think I need a little bit more of that serenity in my life.