The Joys of Sitting in a Beach Chair
Taking note of the imbalance on the pros and cons lists in life.
The ocean is a really cool thing. Powerful. Yah. Beautiful, obviously. The potential to be fun, depending on your bend towards adrenaline, I guess.
I hate it.
I grew up with grandparents who lived on Mission Beach in San Diego.
I spent my summers knee high in holes dug in the sand. Never much of a surfer but boy could your boy wear out a boogie board. I enjoyed the ocean.
But then one summer I was caught in a riptide ( a current that pulls you out and away from the shore) and I had to be rescued by the lifeguards on their jet skis. The scary thing about rip currents is that the accepted form of mitigating the danger of it is to just tread water and let it you pull you where it wants less you exhaust yourself by resisting and drown.
Having disregarded my previous summer’s “fluke accident” seemingly forgetting my near death experience in a matter of months, I was back in the water the next break from school that I got.
Shockingly as I ran head first into the breaking tides of the super fun massively underestimated force that is the ocean, I forsook my previous experience and pain for the pursuit of pleasure. This year I exited without being swept to see by the tide but rather covered in sores from jelly fish and I wasn’t even swimming. I was walking knee deep, simply diving head first into the breaking waves.The ocean in all of its super-funness brought me straight into a clump of dead jellyfish who had been pulled to shore by the tide. Fun fact, dead jelly fish still sting.
Notice the theme here. The ocean has a current under the surface that is dangerous and has the potential to kill things.
All that to say..I MADE IT OUT ALIVE. But wow the ocean is so fun.
Guess what happened the following summer?
A) I ran straight back into the wave.
B) I learned from my last two summers and stayed out of the water.
C) I was eaten by a shark and had a Netflix movie written about me and how I persevered after a shark bit my arm off.
If you chose option A you are correct. If you chose C, it okay somebody loves you.
My dumb-A ran straight into the water to boogie board and again my dumb-A found myself hundreds of yards down the coast and couple hundred yards away from the sand and here is the scariest part. I had no clue. The current took me away from my family and things subtly while I was distracted by fun and when I looked up I was away from everything that I knew.
Today, we still frequently visit Mission. Guess where you will find me when we go to the Ocean? Planted with my A firmly in a beach chair reading a book. Watching the Lifeguards patrol the beach in their jeeps keeping an eye for inevitable person who is taken under by the waves.
Isnt that crazy? There are people hired and put at the ready who say “What youre doing is very dangerous, yes it is fun but it will eventually try to kill you and when it does we are here to save you. But don’t worry we will dry you off calm you down pat your butt and send you back out with a better luck next time parting gift.”
I realized this.
There are things in my life that are represented by the ocean in this story and I want to share them because I know there are people who still frequent the metaphorical oceans in their lives too.
Mine are the gym and social media.
Massive, could be beautiful if experienced properly, potentially fun but could also kill you with a blink of their eye.
Except physical death isn’t the risk its death of your soul that is the wager.
Aren’t they the same though? The ocean and social media?
Social is fun, you get to share your life with your people, or random people, or anyone who might like what youre creating or distributing. The algorithm subtly puts something in your line of site that makes you pause but keep scrolling. You keep swimming deeper into the scroll. You see something else you probably shouldn’t and you pause a little longer this time. Catch another wave keep scrolling and finally youre shown something, or you seek something and you realize how far out to sea the tide has pulled you and you have no clue how you got there. Maybe your friends and your accountability have to come rescue you on their jet skis.
You take a break from social for a couple months because you almost died the last time. But all your friends are doing something fun on social that you want to be a part of and so this trip you tag along but this time you decide to just dip your toes. You’re wise and stay with your feet on the ground, only going where you seem to have control but somehow end up in a patch of dead things that can still hurt you. You walk out with sores from different victims of the tide.
Okay okay 6 months later everyone is doing it. What are the chances you fall for it again. You have worked on your swimming, you have studied the tells of the current and you know when youre caught up and if (when) you do youre going to be prepared to resist it. You jump back in and again youre pulled away from your family and your friends and your accountability life guards are there to save you.
The ocean and social media both have underlying tides that have the potential to kill you. They both look beautiful on the surface for the sake of the positive potential gain that they could bring you in the form of fun and endorphins but whats hidden is a force much greater.
I think the ocean is fun. But the danger is not worth the reward.
Social media is fun, trust me, I am the troll of all trolls on my friend’s accounts. The danger to my soul has proven not worth it.
So I keep my A planted in a beach chair far away from the water.
But Mitch social media is used by everyone.. and I say this. We wonder why as a society we deal with so many of the mental health things that we do. We are taking sips of poison and wondering why we are sick. We like to think we are capable to consuming something that can kill us in small doses as if the effects are neglected by the amount that is ingested. They still exist and they compound.
Ill give one more example to solidify your thoughts of me being crazy, but I have seen the fruit of trimming societally accepted normal activities in my own life and in my marriage and so I feel remiss not sharing. It’s on you to identify why you feel the way you do in certain environments and decide if the health of your soul is worth compromising for the health of you social standing.
I dont go to the gym anymore. I still work out and move my body but I have given up the upstairs at my gym in replace of my peloton and my body weights and bands at home.
Why?
Because the gym is gross. Hear this from a man who can honestly say that outside of my house, if I were to have logged the hours of time spent in place over the span of my life, the gym would be number 2. I lived there. Loved it there. My community was there. My coaches made me be there, my eating disorder demanded my attendance. I was dependent on the gym for my sanity. The gym was my god.
whoops.
The tide of the environmental moment that we live in pulled me to a place where the gym was no longer a place of enjoyment but a place of necessity and I had to do things to satisfy a god who had joined me in my me time.
Here’s the added kicker.
Women wear no clothes at the gym and it is accepted by society as the norm. It is actually protected by society in the form of language that looks like this.
“Women should be able to dress how they want at the gym and men should be able to control themselves.”
Which is fine what ever but also men are wired by God to respond to the female body in a specific way and if that woman is not my wife then I don’t want to look at her.
But how hard is that when every other woman is wearing clothing that pushes parts of their body more and more into view? No matter how hard you try it is impossible not to see. Seeing and looking are different but the more and more you see the greater and greater the temptation to look becomes.
But this is something I have learned through experience and there is science to back it. Your eyes are trained to notice what you pay mind to. So if you are being trained to notice certain body parts of a woman on social, or in the tv we watch then we also inherit the ability to notice those body parts in our day to day. And we live in a world that noticing body parts of women who are not our wives (this applies to single men too) is applauded and reinforced.
I noticed myself trying really hard to resist the tide on this one. I loved the gym but over and over I would have to be rescued by my accountability life guard for not being able to control my eyes. I would leave the gym with my endorphins crushed by the shame I was experiencing because my flesh let my eyes wonder.
Here’s the thing. Society says it’s fine. That it is normal but try this test out. Have this hypothetical conversation.
“Hey babe, I was at the gym today and this woman walked by in spandex and a “sports bra” and I saw a whole lot of skin. Like ALOT. And then a little later another woman dressed the same was squatting and I didn’t mean to but I looked over and saw something I probably shouldn’t have. Are you still cool if I go tomorrow?”
Or one step further.
“Hey, God I know there are countless verses and entire books in the Bible that talk about lust and guarding my eyes and how important it is to you for me protect my heart but the gym is like an exception right? I can see other women there and be tempted to look others who aren’t my wife right? Cause everyone else is. You’re cool with me dabbling in just this one sin right? Cause I mean at least Im not watching porn or like murdering people”
Idk.
A lot of the conversations I have on here are pointed and they are counter what we are taught to believe and I think there is no coincidence to that.
I write to instigate thought. Maybe you can handle the gym. Maybe you can handle social media. But all I ask is that you truly look at your heart for both things and present them in front of the Lord and consider what he would think. And then decide if pleasing him or pleasing your flesh is more important.
I have decided to sacrifice both. Not because I wanted to but because I needed to. I miss the gym a lot. I was actually talking to the Lord about it the other morning because I wanted to figure out a way to get back in the weight room. But I came to the conclusion that I know myself well enough that I do not have enough self-control to keep my eyes where they need to be and so in turn the gym stays on the shelf. I wrote a poem and drew a picture out of my encounter with the Lord and I will leave you with them.
Lord,
Make me blind.
I will forgo sight to gain a sound mind.
I have no desire to look where I should not.
But my flesh has a greater lack of discipline than I thought.
My heart and my souls crave only my bride.
But the death of this world tries to invite me inside.
God make me blind if I cannot exercise control.
I want to walk your narrow path not pay my eyes’ toll.
God, I am sorry that my flesh is willing to disregard your sacrifice for only a glance.
Holy Spirit, I am sorry I grieve you with my prideful stance.
Jesus, it is for me that your blood poured.
So, God, make me blind because I fear you Lord.
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