Saturday, September 13, 2008

Toxic Relationships and the High Tide



We were in Florida this past week, miles away from where Hurricane Ike was suppose to hit, yet its winds affected the water along the Gulf Coast.   For the first part of our week the water along our beach was filled with seeweed and nasty yellow foam which we had never seen before.  Usually the water is so clear you can see right down to the sandy floor.  Due to the extent of the seeweed you had to swim about 40 feet out to get to the clear water and upon returning to land you had to swim through the nastiness again.  Before long, the entire family decided to just sit and build a sand castle realizing that the seeweed was there to stay.   After sitting in the sun for a while we all longed to get back in the water, but dreaded going through the seeweed and yuck so we headed for the pool.

On our last day there, we headed down the boardwalk fully expecting another "seeweedy" day at the beach.  As we past a red flag warning  swimmers to not enter the ocean we agreed that we might just end up at the pool  To our suprise as we came down the steps of the boardwalk we saw a beautiful sight; a clear blue ocean sparkling in the morning sun with very strong crashing waves.  What a delimma; our clear water was back, but we could not swim in it.  That was fine with us, the new ocean sight was so refreshing that we were content with the little pools of saltwater that were  being consistently filled.  So we set up our chairs at the very edge of the water pools and enjoyed our view.  No complaints here!

While  sitting and watching the strength of the crashing waves, my husband commented on how the strong waves  had actually pushed the nasty seaweed out.  Without the waves, we would still be viewing and ocean filled with seaweed.   He then went on to share how sometimes relationships need crashing waves to come in and clean them out as well.  There are times when a relationship becomes toxic to where the hurt is so deep it clouds  relationship and prevents healing.    And without the shock and strength of huge waves the relationship would stay stagnant and murky.    In other words, there are times when it may require it to get worse before it gets better or go backwards before you go forward.  There maybe times when we must hit rock bottom before we can see clearly how beautiful things really are.  


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