"DOLPHIN DANCE " I have always been pulled toward the sea...even as a land-locked little girl in the Midwest. I spent most of my childhood escaping to the banks of the local creek...pushing little round pebbles under the sparkling surface with my toes...to spend hours daydreaming of how that little creek fed into the St. Joe River just a few hundred yards away...then to the "Mighty Mississippi"...then to the Gulf of Mexico and then to the Atlantic Ocean...where valiant dolphins kept the unwary swimmer safe from hungry sharks.... How many times over the ensuing years when life's struggles seemed way too hard, have I slipped back into those halcyon daydreams and found comfort floating peacefully along my childhood creek to the ocean... My geography has never been nearly so developed as my imagination...the St. Joe actually twists around itself to empty into Lake Michigan...and should my childhood creek water ever make it to the ocean, the route is somewhat more dramatic... Lake Michigan is connected to Lake Huron and then flows through Lake Erie to Lake Ontario by way of Niagara Falls (OH MY!!!!! Where's my barrel?) then into the St Lawrence and finally flowing into the gulf of St Lawrence and into the Atlantic Ocean...and the afore-mentioned dolphins.... Well, I'm no longer that child and my life has followed a path as complex, turbulent and convoluted as that of my creekwater. Shortly after I found myself living in New Jersey, I discovered the Jersey Shore. Trapped in a bad marriage and broken in spirit as well as body, I often would jump in the car and escape for hours down by the ocean. On one such escape day, near the end of my failing first marriage, I found myself on a sandbar at Wildwood Beach, staring out at the vast expanse of the gently rolling Atlantic. As always, I whimsically pondered whether any drop of the vast expanse of ocean spread out before me might have passed by my toes at the creek when I was a child...and if it could help me remember who I used to be... Chiding myself for such silliness, I turned to head back to the car, the Parkway and reality...but found the tide had shifted and cut off my retreat. Ah well...it was only about six feet to shore, and I could jump most of that...then face a soggy ride home and whatever came after.... I peeled off my jeans...the beach was deserted...so modesty was less of an issue than wet pants...wadded them up, and tossed them up on the bank. As I bent to pick up my shoes to toss after, I saw a dark fin flash right beside me on the ocean side! A pod of dolphins came right alongside me as they breakfasted on the little fish they had herded up next to my sand bar...and then they were gone. For a fleeting moment, I yearned to dive in after them...and to be truly free...but instead I turned around and waded to shore. That moment of magic sustained me for the next twenty years....
Until today... ...as I sit in a kayak off Cape May Point with dolphin fins in the water all around me...rocking through the water with a motion that reminds me of the rising and falling of carousel horses...
I think back to those dolphins and their freedom that I envied all those years ago and take a moment to thank God for all that He has brought me through since then...and the words to my favorite hymn come to me:
That first marriage may have ended in shattered dreams...but since then I met and married the true love of my life and we have two beautiful children. I have survived illness...and come to terms with my daily battle with a progressive disability, reclaiming strength and skills that I had thought lost forever. I have friends I can trust with my life...and even better than that...with my kids. I have come to acknowledge the presence and guidance of the Lord in my life...and I am truly free.
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