The place where I can't touch bottom

Yesterday, I floated in the sea.

That may sound refreshing and relaxing, which it was.  But for me, it was also a song of victory.  I moved past the edge of the water, a little deeper than my knees.  I ventured further into the surf where the small waves pushed their bubbly way onto the beach, reaching and falling back.  I moved deeper into the water than I have gone in a very long time, past the breakers of my childhood anxieties, to where the sea was smooth and calm.

What lay beneath the surface?  Maybe things I did not want to know, a fish or two.  But certainly not the sea monsters of the magnitude that my imagination had crafted, so many years in the making.  These sharks of mine were not man-eating, but joy-destroying, figments of fear from childhood that did not just flare up, but had staked a false claim and taken up permanent residence.

Fear protects us from actual danger.  Fear helps us to make wise decisions.  But illusory fears are what paralyze us.  And those phantoms without substance expand from a single childhood fear into limitations we ridiculously impose on ourselves.  One fear multiplies into a hundred others.

I decided yesterday to step beyond the breakers.

I surprised not only myself ...but everyone around me.

Fear not, for I am with you,
be not dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you
     with My victorious right hand.

                           Isaiah 41.10

What is your ocean?