Rocks of Life

I attended my brother’s wedding in Oregon on July 4. My brother was shrewd enough to schedule the wedding for July 4 to make it that much easier to remember his anniversary.
Some people reading may know that my wife is also from Oregon. To many, it is a magical thing that my brother and I both fell in love with girls from Oregon. For my parents, it is magical that two girls fell in love with us at all.
Before the wedding, my wife, Sarah, and I traveled to see her family in their hometown of Boring. I am not making that up, my wife comes from a town named Boring.
The churches in the area tend to adopt the name of the surrounding cities as to not be the Boring Baptist Church or Boring Church of Christ.
While visiting the in-laws, we took a trip down to the Oregon coast. If you haven’t been to the Oregon coast, it is a beautiful site, but is not a sunny California beach. Much of the beach is filled with rocks and the sky is normally gray, but it has a certain charm and beauty all its own.
My mother-in-law wanted to travel to the Devil’s Punchbowl while we were on the coast. The beach is called the Devil’s Punch Bowl because it is a cave you can walk around during low tide, but fills up with water. It isn’t a scary looking place until you realize the water that was 20 feet away five minutes ago is now at your ankles.
Luckily, I didn’t get caught and wind up being one of those stories you hear about years later.
“Some guy in his mid-twenties was jumping around on a bunch of rocks like a 3-year-old and drowned in the punchbowl. Remember kids, don’t be idiots.”
I didn’t make it off the beach unscathed, however. I have a brother-in-law who is slightly younger than me and constantly challenges me to feats of strength or athleticism. If you have seen me, you can guess that most feats of athleticism that I am involved in are running to the fridge to get the last piece of pie.
However, I am constantly intrigued by the challenges presented by my brother-in-law and try to participate in them. I wind up hurt or tired — usually both — and think, “I’m not doing that again.”
But I do. And I did.
The challenge for this trip was to climb a rock on the beach which was quite tall and not easily accessible. My brother-in-law activated some sort of anti-gravity belt he was wearing and easily scurried to the top. It was now my turn and I looked the rock over, decided that I would jump, land on a foothold and lift myself up on top of the rock.
I didn’t consider, however, that I was wearing my rubber Crocs on my feet. As I said before, I am not athletic and don’t understand the concept of “correct footwear” when it comes to any kind of activity. If it is hot outside I wear sandals or Crocs and if it is cold, I wear my boots.
Well, I was casual on this day and wore my Crocs. Needless to say, the rubberness of the Crocs didn’t go greatly with the wetness of the rocks. I grabbed hold of the top of the rock, but my feet slid out from under me, leaving me dangling above the ground.
I was terrified that I was going to fall a good 10 feet into some rocks below and break something other than my pride which already lay shattered on the ground. Well if my pride wasn’t broken by the failed attempt, it was definitely broken when I looked down to see there was a good two inches between my feet and the ground.
I was hanging for dear life, kicking in the air to find a foothold when I could simply drop and land in the soft sand. I wish that was the end, but God, having a sense of humor, decided it wouldn’t be.
I was able to say, “That was embarrassing,” before I started walking, slipped on another rock and fell face-first into the sand. At that time, I thought it best to take a rest in the sand considering I was already there and I was pretty much terrified at the idea of getting back up.
Despite the broken dreams and bruised ego at the end of the trip, I had a great time. I allowed myself to go out and climb on rocks and just let loose. There are too many times where I decided not to do something because it would make me look silly or I might not like it.
I’m pretty much always going to look silly, so I don’t really have to worry about that anymore. I have decided that certain opportunities only come by every once in a while and it is best to try them. The worst case scenario is you fall a few times, get back up and decide to wear tennis shoes the next time you go to the beach.
Go out and climb some rocks in your life before it is too late because time flies and pretty soon, the water has risen and you won’t have the opportunity to do the things you once did.