Life's A Beach

I begin to understand why people fall in love with the beach.  When I was a child, the beach was a place with icy cold (I grew up in New England), salty water, and where I got the worst sunburns of my life, due to my fair complexion and the fact that no one had ever heard of sunscreen back then. 
As an adult, I began to long for a glimpse of the ocean,  and when we went to visit my family, I would try to get to the shore at least once during the week or two that we were there. We would usually drive out for an evening walk or picnic, after all danger of sunburn was gone.  A few minutes gazing out to sea somehow brought me a sense of calmness and peace that was hard to catch in other places.  

Now, in my fiftieth year,  I have officially had something that I never thought I would enjoy- two vacations at the beach- last year we were privileged to go to St. Simons, GA, and this year, to Emerald Isle, NC.  Those two vacations are all the credentials I need to wax poetic about the sea, so here goes.
There is something about the sea that feeds the eternal nature of my soul.  Looking out into the expanse of the ocean fills my heart with a sense of the eternal like nothing else here on this earth.  I don't really know why, I just know that it's true.  Yet, often when I walk the beach I find myself looking down.  I am looking for pretty things to pick up, or at the birds on the shore.  Focusing on the ground beneath my feet, looking for pretty things to fill my hands doesn't bring me the same peace that looking up does.  The things on the shore do give me a sense of pleasure, but it is looking up at the expanse of the ocean and the far horizon that brings a change in my perspective and the sense of peace that I long for.  
I fear I go through this life much the same way.  I am so focused on what is at my feet that I forget to look up at the eternal.  I miss the perspective that looking at God can bring and instead, fill my eyes with the crashing of the waves around me and the baubles on the ground, alternately worried about what the waves will bring and hoping to find something to make me happy.   
My week away was a wonderful reminder that life is for looking up.  Once again I am praying for the wisdom to remember that in the days ahead.