Fifteen years ago I was a much younger woman, Mom and wife. After 18 months as a full time military wife while my husband was stationed overseas, I embarked on a two week stint to Washington state, a place I had fallen in love with during a business trip a few years earlier. I went there to rest my body and mind and reconnect some parts of my soul.
I journeyed through parts of the state, towards the Olympic Peninsula coast, with water and long sandy beaches on my mind. I am a Minnesota native, but had lived and gone to school in Florida for a short time and I had learned how connected I am to the water. It soothes not only my body, but again, my Soul. I was used to pulling into a parking lot, unloading my stuff and walking 200 yards across white sand to snuggle my beach chair in the sand. Now, after driving and driving and not seeing the water other than a few lakes, I was completely perplexed as to how one “goes to the beach in the Pacific NW.” Even on my last trip I was able to just drive up to the ocean in Oregon and hike a short trail seeing water the entire time.
I stopped and chatted with some locals in LaPush, a reservation area that was known for its gorgeous beaches. “Go to the sign that says Third Beach, park and hike in”, I was told. So off I went. Miles down I found the green road sign that said “Third Beach” and I pulled in. There was nothing but pine trees. There was no water, no sound of the surf, no smell of the ocean…wtf.
I grabbed my backpack and did as I was told, I hiked. There were so many times I was tempted to turn around, convinced I had made a mistake and was in the wrong place and probably at the wrong time. I was a woman alone, hiking through mile high timbers and I was beginning to seriously doubt the locals. Finally another person came towards me on the trail, “how much further?” I asked. “Oh, you’re about ½ way there”, a smiling reply”. I struggled internally with a mixed response – I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about all of this.
Finally I heard it, the faint sound of waves. More of a roar than anything but the pounding sound of the surf is unmistakable. Eventually the trail went into switchbacks, down the cliff side and with each one the sounds, the smell and finally the sight told me I was getting close!
The view is to date one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen in nature. Huge rock formations, pounding surf, miles of dark sand beach. I scrambled the washed ashore logs, walked for hours and sat to write until the long shadow told me it was time to get going before I ran out of daylight on the trail. As I left, my entire body felt as one with the movement of the water. I was restored.
After my divorce I always dreamed of taking my water baby son to this beach. I dreamed of running along his side, playing in tide pools, splashing in the surf. At that time he was about seven years old.
While I revisited this beach a few times, Christian was never for one reason or another able to join me. I was out there taking a class, visiting a friend, or restoring the broken pieces of my heart and soul and this typically only happens for me when I’m alone. So, never with Christian.
As many of you know, last year my son joined the Navy. As many of you do not know, the Navy placed him last fall in Bremerton, Washington, about two hours from LaPush. I am writing this, as a tale of nothing more than “hey, sometimes it takes a while, but Spirit hears you” as we’re flying home from Washington state. Yes, we finally made the journey to Third Beach together, along with my second husband, on my birthday! While there was no running in the surf, it’s January and my knee won’t let me run. We played, we laughed, we took in the incredibleness of this one little place on earth, together. Finally.
My Soul is once again, in more ways, restored.
I’m not saying everything has to take 15 years to manifest. I’m simply saying, your Spirit heart hears you. It’s working for you and with you, turning and twisting and shifting life to line up your great dreams. It hasn’t forgotten the love in your heart when you put out that wish into the universe. Spirit hears us. It hears and listens with our great plan, written like a map, in front of it so it delivers often from a place of knowing “just when the time is right”.
Sometimes, oftentimes, it’s hard to be patient. But dear one, please know you are heard and being responded to, even when it takes the exact amount of time that it takes for a dream to come true.
It’s coming true.
Forever the journey, Anne