Doggie-Paddling

As you may well know, I love journals.  Love writing in them, love going back and reading them, love selecting just the right one at the store.  I even started the habit of writing in a journal for each of my nieces and nephew. I have no idea when I will give each to them, but some day down the road, I will when I think they can appreciate the significance. 

I recently got out all of my old journals, going through each one and reliving the years.  It's always a little scary to flip through the early ones and see "I ♥ NSYNC" written all over the place. (I have since moved on.)  Or to see the list of Beanie Babies I happened to buy that day. (I got rid of those long ago, thankfully.)  Or all the reasons why I hated the horse that I was currently taking lessons on. (Some of those horses used to make me so angry.  Why can't you just do what I want, you big tub of fat?!)  Or which guy I had a crush on (those are always embarrassing, especially ones from high school and before.  What was I thinking?!).  I try to flip through those pages quickly.  Some moments in life you just don't want to relive.

But other moments, you want to linger over and savor just a bit more.  Sometimes I take notes on my own notes, because I'll read an entry and think, "Dang - that was a good line." (Clearly those lines did not include N SYNC.)  There was one line in particular that recently stood out to me, written exactly three years ago today:

It's like trying to doggie-paddle in a mud puddle when the whole ocean is on the other side of the hill. 

I don't remember the exact context of the entry.  I'm sure it was relaying thoughts on my then-spiritual state of my mind, this feeling that I'm somehow always missing something, somehow, somewhere.  But it's as true now as it was then.  Sometimes I feel like I'm doggie-paddling in that mud puddle, completely missing the fact that the ocean is just on the other side.  How often do we do that - get so wrapped up in what is right in front of our noses that we all together miss out on the flip side?  I clearly must have been channeling C.S. Lewis as he once stated a similar concept:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy in offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Doggie-paddling can be so exhausting, though, after awhile.  It's not a very efficient use of energy.  But some days that's how I feel in my attempts at following Christ, like I'm somehow missing the greater work because I'm so wrapped up in making sure my mud pies look just the way I want them to.  

I think it's time to find the ocean.