Two hundred people paddled out for her brother in May and she has not been in the water since.
He was twenty. He had been in the water since he was four. Their whole family is a water family and their father is a water man and their grandmother could still swim past the break at seventy.
The paddle out was the most beautiful thing she has ever been part of. Flowers on the water. Everybody in a circle holding hands out past the break. Somebody's little kid on the front of a board in the middle of it. Her father spoke and did not get through it and nobody minded.
And afterward, up on the sand, with the boards going back on the roofs, the coach came over.
That man taught her brother to read a set when he was six. He cried harder at that service than her uncle did. He is the reason her brother was good enough to be out there at all.
And he put both hands on her shoulders and said: the ocean gave him and the ocean took him.
He meant it as the deepest thing he knows. In his world that sentence is reverence. It is what you say when something is too big to argue with and you are trying to hand somebody a way to bear it.
She has not been past her knees since.
She goes down there. She sits on the sand most evenings, and her feet get wet, and she cannot make herself go further, and the reason is not fear of drowning. She is a strong swimmer and she knows the break better than most people alive.
The reason is that ever since that sentence, the water has been something with an appetite. Something that decided. Something that looked at her family and took the one it wanted.
And she cannot say a word of this to the coach, who has left three messages and cried on two of them.
If that is a shoreline anybody is sitting on, stay here. There is a line in the psalms that hands the water back.
The sea is His and He made it
Here it is, and it is short, and it settles a very large question.
The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.Psalm 95:5
His. And He made it.
Read what that does to the coach's sentence. It removes the subject. The ocean is not a giver and it is not a taker, because a giver and a taker have to be a somebody, and the sea in this verse is an object with a maker.
That is the consistent testimony of the whole book, from the first page onward. The water is made on the second day, along with everything else, and it never once in the entire Bible acts on its own initiative. It is divided. It is walked on. It is spoken to. In the one scene where it appears to be doing something enormous, a carpenter stands up in a boat and tells it to be quiet, and it stops, and the men in the boat are terrified, not of the water, of Him.
You are not up against something with an appetite, and you were never in a contest with the sea. Psalm 95:5 puts the ocean under His hand as a made thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired that line and has never handed the water any authority since.
Now that does not tell you why. Nobody has that and I am not going to invent one, and this page will not hand you a reason dressed up as a comfort. What it does is take one specific weight off, and it is the weight that has been keeping you at your knees.
You have been carrying a wrong picture rather than a real enemy, and you were never rightly afraid of the thing you love. Psalm 95:5 says the sea is His and He made it, and the Spirit who moved on the face of the water on the first page has not stepped back from it since.
The coach was reaching for reverence
Now let me stand up for that man, because he has left three messages and he is going to keep leaving them.
Where he comes from, that sentence is not fatalism. It is the closest thing he has to worship. It is what a man says when he has stood in front of something enormous his whole life and knows it does not answer to him.
He was not describing a hunting ocean. He was trying to hand a twenty year old's sister the only shape he has for something too big to fight.
The trouble is that the shape has a subject in it, and grammar does something to a grieving person that it does not do to anybody else. It went into her ear as: it chose him.
That is not what he meant and it is what she heard, and both of those are true, and the second one is why she cannot get past her knees.
Give him the messages back. Call him. Or do not, and put the sentence down anyway, because the sentence and the man are two separate things and only one of them has to go.
Right now, as you read this, you are free to keep the coach and to hand back the picture, and you were never given a choice between the two. Psalm 95:5 corrects the grammar without convicting the man, and His Spirit is not asking anybody to hold something against a man who cried on two voicemails.
The water is not the enemy and it is not neutral either
Here is the part I want you to have as somebody who grew up on a shoreline, because a half fixed picture is worse than none.
Taking the appetite out of the water does not leave you with a dead thing. Scripture does not do that either.
That same psalm has the sea belonging to Him. Another has the deep calling to deep at the noise of His waterspouts, which is water speaking to water about God. Another has the waves lifting up their voice and the Lord on high being mightier than the noise of many waters.
The ocean in the Bible is loud, enormous, alive with the presence of the One who made it, and completely without a will of its own. It is the biggest thing your family has ever stood in front of and it is not a person and it never made a decision about your brother.
So the water can come back to you. Not as something to fight and not as something to fear, and not as something you have to forgive, which is what the sentence was quietly asking of you.
You are allowed to love the water again, and you were never required to forgive an object. Psalm 95:5 makes it His and made rather than sovereign, and the Holy Spirit is at work over a shoreline in the evening as much as anywhere on this coast.
So here is where this leaves you, on the sand, with your feet wet and the light going.
The God who is on that beach is not a force and He is not weather. He is a Person who made a sea and then, when He came here, He got into a boat on it, and slept through a storm on it, and walked on it in the dark, and cooked fish beside it at dawn for men who had let Him down.
That is not a God who is on the far side of the water from you. He is in it and beside it and over it, and He is the only one in the whole picture who has ever had a will.
You are stood beside on that shoreline by that same Christ, and you were stood beside on the day of the paddle out. Psalm 95:5 says the sea is His and He made it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been on that sand with you every evening since May.
And I am not going to tell you when you go past your knees. Comfort is His to give, in His own way and His own timing, and a summer spent sitting on the sand is not a verdict on your faith or on your family.
But there is a second weight and it comes off tonight. You have carried a picture that was never true, that the water looked at your family and made a choice. Psalm 95 stands in the written word as the permanent answer to it, and the Holy Spirit has never once given the ocean a vote.
If the weight ever turns dangerous down there, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for you, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the plain truth about the evenings. Getting another person physically near you is not weakness and it is not a failure of faith. It is the same instinct that put two hundred people in a circle past the break in May.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the sand, with the light going and the water in front of you. The authority to speak to what has been keeping you at your knees was given to you in Christ, and it does not rise or fall with how brave you feel tonight. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does with the ache afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Idea that the ocean chose my brother, you are not the truth and you were never asked to be. Psalm 95:5 says the sea is His and He made it, and I hand you back and I am not carrying you down here any more.
- Fear of the water I grew up in, get out in the name of Jesus. The written word has a carpenter stand up in a boat and speak to the sea and the sea obey Him, and the Comforter never once gave that water a will of its own.
- Lord, the sea is Yours and Your hands formed it, as Psalm 95:5 says, and You slept in a boat on it and walked on it in the dark. I thank You that nothing out there ever made a decision, and I am keeping the coach and leaving his sentence on this sand.
Psalm 95:5
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