Rounding the Point

These past six weeks have provided the opportunity for some serious kayak therapy. 

It didn’t start as therapy.  It started as a challenge to myself to see how many times I could make my way around the entire island this season.   A friend threw out the random number of nine back at the first part of June.  Except for a few stints at home and my upcoming trip to Thailand, I am mostly at the cottage this year all the way through to the beginning of September, and, since I’m already at seven, I’m confident I will surpass this and be setting a new goal even by the end of this week.

Our island is large enough to appear as a small dot on a map of Ontario.  It takes me just a little over an hour to paddle around it, although the gradual increase of my skill is shaving off a few minutes every time, depending on the chop that day.  Mostly I choose times when the water is flat.  And I think that’s where the therapy kicks in.

Being out in the kayak is all things fresh and bright and creation-connective for me.  Water meets sky meets tree line.   Sun all wonderful and warm, with the air wild and worry free.  Riding lower than even in the canoe, I feel more intimacy with the water itself, my two-ended paddle offering its respect with each dip and pull.  My body seems fully engaged and deeply relaxed at the same time, legs and back braced, shoulders and arms in rhythm with the elements.  I breathe with it.  I pray with it.

For every trip around there’s this spot I mark in my mind.  It’s the rocky point that defines half way.  It takes me from the more sheltered, soul-filling waters between islands along the channels, out into the open for a stretch across, before turning back into a bay that takes me the rest of the way, again in waters calm and still and healing.   From this spot on, to turn back makes no sense.  I will have to paddle just as many strokes to get home, either way.    

So at this point, each time, I leave where I’ve come from in order to arrive where I started; home again.

These past six weeks have been uniquely difficult for me, emotionally.  I have let go of one of my life’s best gifts – all planned and properly accomplished, but painfully released just the same.   There’s this rather amazing community of faith I once pastored.  I love that community more than I can articulate.  But I have stepped away, and for a necessary six month period, am separated from so much that my soul has thrived on for over twenty years.   And while this new thing I’m doing also includes pursuing deep passions, there has been, continues to be a shocking depth of grief.  And disorientation.  And fear.

What have I done?

But out in the kayak He speaks. 

Morning sun in full glory this day, only nature sounds the praise.  Rounding the point in rhythm with creation, the Creator reminds me to receive.   Receive the enviable gift of all this time to rest in this sacred space.  Receive the lavish healing of impossible-to-avoid ministry wounds.  Receive the reward of passion-driven work yet to do.

 To paddle back the way I came makes no sense.   I will get home again if I just keep going. 

I am comforted by the invitation to return to my community of faith in due time.  There will be a sense that when that time comes I will feel gloriously at home again, without question. 

But there’s another sense of home in this for me; that understanding that I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, being who I was created to be.  That’s where I feel I’ve rounded the point.  That’s where this journey is taking me.

With these next five days ahead blocked off for some uninterrupted writing, planning and prayer – another good gift to receive right now – I anticipate His presence and persistent love to pull me further.

And I’ll let you know when I reach nine times around.

New goal? 

Fifteen. 

Another random number,

but something to inspire me forward.