Mom Blog: Shuffling For Stingrays

Shuffling for Stingrays
Not long ago, our family went to Florida for a week of playing in the waves and building sandcastles. Some very dear friends of ours have a family beach house and they invited us to join them on their annual trek to the beach. You know when you travel with friends, it either endears you to them more, or it makes you never want to see them again. In this case, it made us life long friends and we are so grateful.

As a part of their annual trip, they rent a pontoon boat and travel along the bay to a place called Shell Island. My friend has bragged and bragged about this place and the huge, beautiful shells you can find there. I am a sucker for finding a cool shell on the beach, so I was very excited to go. When Shell Island was in our distant sight, my friend, let’s call her, Jenn, pointed it out to me and said, it looks really weedy on this side, but once you get over that sand dune to the other side, it opens up to the most beautiful beach you have ever seen. This really got my heart beating fast. I am a sucker for a beautiful beach.

We anchored the boat, at what seemed to me, way too far out in the bay. As I sat on my comfortable seat in the boat, I surmised that to get to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen, I would have to walk a long way and through some nasty, murky ocean water. This did not excite me. I am not a sucker for walking in cloudy water, especially cloudy ocean water. There’s all sorts of things swimming around in there.

And as I continued sitting, wondering how I was going to get to the other side, Jenn said to me….Now, Dawn, when you are walking towards the shore, you have to kind of shuffle your feet and stir up the water. Don’t walk like normal, you have to shuffle. You have to shuffle for the stingrays.

The what?

The stingrays. You shuffle your feet so they know you are there. Apparently it scares them away so that you do not accidentally step on the stinger.

Alrighty.

My first step off of the boat was gross. My flip flop stuck to the ocean floor and I had to pull it out of the thick murk in order to shuffle. And shuffle I did. I shuffled all the way to the shore. Once I got there, I had to walk through tall ocean grass and step on broken shells that crunched under the weight of my shoes. I walked over the dune and as I looked ahead, the most beautiful beach was before me. Water bluer than my mind has ever imagined. Sand so soft and white that my feet sank into it like a fleece blanket.

It really was the most beautiful ocean view I have ever seen. I had to walk through some pretty gross water to get there. I had to shuffle my feet so that a sting ray would not attack me. I had to change my attitude because I did not want to even walk over there.

Isn’t that how it is with life sometimes? We have to walk through some pretty tough stuff to get to the beauty that God has before us. Most of the time we are afraid to take the first step and we resist. We kick and scream, we throw a fit, we hold on to all that we know to be true, and all God is asking is for us to take one little step, a few shuffles here and a few shuffles there.

There is a beautiful beach awaiting.