Standing at the Water's Edge, I Couldn't Stop Asking — What Is It All About?
May comes to an end. I spread my sister’s ashes.
The highlight of May — perhaps of this entire season of grief — was placing my sister, Janet’s ashes into the ocean. This was her desire: to have her ashes spread on the ocean in Florida. Florida was her home. The ocean was her love.
She is finally free. Free to be in the sea and move with the sea. No longer confined by walls, schedules, or the endless demands of living. She is free to float. Free to observe the beauty of God’s undersea creation that was always hidden from us. Free to be alone while surrounded by thousands of creatures who neither know her nor judge her — yet somehow still recognize her presence.
She is free of pain and dementia. Free from her battles — with her past, her friends, her teachers, her father, her mother, her choices, her loves, her losses, and yes, even the television. Free to think without distraction as she floats around the world, the ocean her pathway.
Free of when.
Free of why.
Free of what.
Free of how.
Free of should.
This is real freedom. She just is. Floating. Watching. Seeing. Being seen. All without judgment — neither judging nor being judged. She is finally accepting where she is, who she is, and what it all is — as God’s plan. Right now. Exactly as it should be.
She is finally experiencing God. Not reading about Him. Not hoping for Him. Experiencing Him — His majesty, His power, His love. A perspective only available after one dies. She has entered the supernatural. Her eyes are open to God and His secrets. Her meaning is now possible for the very first time in her life.
And that raises the question I kept turning over while standing at the water’s edge: What is it all about?
The answer, I realized, is both obvious and humbling. And here is the hardest part — even if Janet had known the answer while she was living, it would not have mattered to her then. Not because the answer isn’t true, but because we are not built to receive it this side of eternity.
Why? Because God. That’s why.
God is God, and we are simply not. He is the Alpha and the Omega — the beginning and the end. And we? We are a morning mist. Here at dawn. Gone once the sun rises.
We disappear. Leaving only God.