Slowly Drifting

I love the ocean. I grew up in Daytona/Ormond Beach and going to the beach was a big part of my life. We didn’t have a lot of extras when we were kids, but the beach was always there for free entertainment. As I grew older it became a hangout place as a teen, a romantic place to walk at night on dates, and a family fun day after we had kids. There is beauty in the ocean and also swift moving power. You could float for hours as you bobbed over the waves, but if you didn’t pay attention you would end up far from where you began. The current would pull you (sometimes quickly) away from your spot on the shore. When our kids would play in the water we would constantly have to call them back from where they had drifted. It was easy to forget where you were and find yourself much farther down the shoreline than you anticipated.

It’s easy to drift in other areas of our life too. We enter into the current of busy schedules and have desires, ambitions, and standards we want to live by. When we forget to stop and refocus, we move farther away from them than we ever intended. It’s not that we willingly abandon our principles and goals as much as we slowly drift away from them. If we want to stay in line with what matters, we’ve got to make a habit of reevaluating where we are based on where we want to go and the person we want to become. We won’t slowly drift into better decisions, but will have to fight to stay on track. If we choose not to do this we’ll end up far from where we thought we would be.