The God who sees

I've had a moment. 

Ah, hello God. 

I've had a moment. Just wanted to tell you. Not that you don't know already, because I'm pretty sure that you were behind it. Did you smile indulgently as the penny dropped? 

It was one of those lightbulb moments where two seemingly unrelated things suddenly link up and I get to make the connection. 

Just out of shot was a huge crowd.
The camera doesn't always
tell the truth...

There I was, sitting on a bench at the harbour in a little seaside village last week on holiday. The sun was shining and Bryan and the girls were crabbing. I had the camera slung around my neck and I'd been taking photos of the boats moored along the jetty, the light on the water and the joy on my girls' faces as they carefully landed the crabs. It was a special few minutes. Quiet, the sun warm on my face, everyone happy and a chance to sit on my own with my eyes closed. Mmm. 

I was thinking about the photographs. The previous night I'd loaded onto my Facebook page a handful of holiday snaps taken earlier on in the week and I was planning to add a few more from this day. We'd been out in a boat, seen seals on a sandbank and sailing boats sending up sparkling spray as they splooshed past. Should be some decent pictures, I thought. 

Anyone looking at my Facebook page would think that it had been the perfect holiday. The perfect family on a perfect holiday having a perfect time. Never a cross word, never a tantrum, never a duff moment, no rain, no clouds, no seaweed, no jarring notes.

The best photos get posted, with captions pointing out the exciting things we're doing and all the fun we're having. I 'check in' at lovely places and share the endearing things that the children say. I post my best pictures; the shiniest, sparkliest, most beautiful photographs. Perfect. 

It struck me that I post the pride things. The boast things. The I'm doing great things. I joked about it with a good friend; we might send a text to each other saying, 'Help! I'm having a nightmare!' and post on Facebook 'What a wonderful day at the beach!'  

The photographs made the point for me, though. Only the best make the cut. Not the shaky ones, or the ones showing that the lens had a mark on it, or the ones that are out of focus, or even the ones where the sun was behind a cloud, if I can help it.  I don't post the ones that show things in an unflattering light, even if that's how they were. They don't make good photos. Wait till the sun comes out, and show people those shots. The others are private.

The times when I feel crabby

Why would I? Look, people, this is how disorganised I am! This is how depressing today was! Hmm.

I don't post the photo of all of us scowling because we got to a place and found it closed, and then had a collective tantrum. I don't post the one of me taken from an unflattering angle sprawling on the sofa, looking enormous with an open mouth and a furrowed brow, concentrating on a text message. That one got deleted straight away. Sometimes we even tweak the photographs with image-enhancing software to add more light if it was a bit dark, or to airbrush out a blemish, adjust a wobbly horizon or even crop them to cut out of the shot the things we don't want. All so that we can present to the world the perfect picture. 

Every picture tells a story. Just not the whole story.

Everybody does it. Even if we don't take photographs, we airbrush and crop and tint our public bits so that the best is on show and the worst lies on the floor of the cutting room.  Aha. The camera can lie...

And while I'm having a moan, those Facebook posts are full of annoying exclamation marks. As you know, I'm not a fan of the exclamation mark and believe that they should be used sparingly but over and over again I read posts where people use them, consciously or unconsciously to indicate a high level of triumph and excitement and happiness. 

'Having a wonderful time!'

'This was so funny!!'

 'An amazing thing has happened to me!!!'

I'm just as bad. I may be wary of the exclamation mark but I'm definitely guilty of airbrushing. I hide so much from everyone - those close to me and those that I don't know so well. I don't want people to know that I lose my temper so often, or that I sulk when I don't get to do what I want to do, or that I'm snappy and mean when I should be kind and thoughtful. Crop. Airbrush. Delete. Smile, and post that. 

Select the best. Discard the rest. 

The strange thing is that while I fully recognise what I'm doing, and common sense and experience tells me that other people are doing it too, I fall for everyone else's publicity every time. What wonderful lives these people are living. How happy they seem. What a harmonious family. What well-behaved children. When these people go somewhere, it's open when they get there (actually, they were canny and booked in advance thus avoiding the queue, of course). When they look for somewhere to have lunch, the perfect cafe materialises immediately; they didn't spend an hour traipsing around with bad grace for an affordable place that wasn't too busy and a menu that contained things that the children would eat... no, that only happens to me. And I don't make it public.

If I'm busy airbrushing out my imperfections, why don't I assume that they are doing it too? Only posting the highlights? Why do I allow myself to be intimidated? 

Why do I compare my worst bits with their best bits? 

Don't get me wrong, I like to see people's holiday pictures. I like to hear about their successes and I know that we all do get moments where it all comes together; the opportunity, the subject matter, the light, the lens and the smile, and those moments should be celebrated. And shared. We should all join in the delight. If there are six people in a photo and all of them have their eyes open and a smile on their face, post the picture on Facebook! Let's enjoy it!  But I should bear in mind that there were probably half a dozen where the sun had gone in, or a child refused to smile, or everyone had their heads cut off. 

I need to remember that beneath the pinnacle of wonderful perfection there is a mountain of trial and failure and imperfection and blemish. 

Let's be honest. It's not just me. 

Is it? 

The punchline really isn't the realisation that I should stop comparing myself with other people and realise that what I see isn't necessarily the truth, or the whole truth - the most important thing that came to me the other day on that bench by the sea was that you see me. 

You are El Roi; the God who sees me. You see the triumph and the disaster. You see the happy and the sad. You see the bits I try to airbrush and the bits I crop and the bits I don't post on Facebook for the world to see. You see everything there is to see - and you love me anyway. I don't have to try to edit myself or my life to impress you; I couldn't if I tried. You see it all. You know my words before I speak them and my hopes and dreams and fears and failures. And you love me anyway. 

Lord, thankyou that you see me. I can be me. I can give you the blurred edges and accidents and out of focus moments. I can lay it all in front of you. Thankyou for that immense, all consuming love that paid the price for me even when I was far, far away. 

Thankyou for this moment. Thankyou for showing me. 

Sun, sea, sand ... and seaweed

Evening, God.

From where I'm sitting, I can see a very special part of your handiwork.  I can look out of the window of the cottage that we're renting for the week and I can see the sea. Silvery, calm, shimmering - tide in at the moment so the sandy beach where we sat earlier is lost beneath the gentle waves splashing on the breakwater. 

I love the sea.

It's very beautiful. I love the sea. I think I've said that several times before, but I know you don't mind. I'll keep going on about it. 

Something inside me expands when I get to spend time at the seaside. I love the sound of the sea, the way the sunlight sparkles when it catches the waves, the rhythm of it; the way sometimes you can count the waves and predict which one will be the big one when the tide is coming in.  

I love rock pools and the little treasures that my husband can unearth for the children and I love that he can spend hours stooped over little pools and turning over rocks to reveal hidden creatures. 

I love the way the timber of the breakwaters have weathered in the relentless sun and wind and sea. I love the way that there are stones jammed between them so tightly that they can't be dislodged, but the might of the sea threw them there carelessly. 

I love pebbles and the sshhh of shingle and the way that I sink in the fine sand and become off balance when I stand in the surf and watch a wave receding. 

I love the excitement on my daughters' faces when they see the sea for the first time and their impatience to get down to the beach. I love that this year they are fearless and happy to wade into the sea until they can barely touch the bottom and then swim instead of just hopping over the breakers as they have in previous years. 

Off to the beach!

I love that, because it's something that I can't do. 

I love almost everything about the sea. 

I love the sea very much, but I've never been in it. At least, I've never been deeper than my knees, and then, being British and only ever having been in the sea around our shores, it's with great trepidation. 

I'm afraid of seaweed. 

Don't laugh. 

I know you weren't laughing. Does it upset you, that I hate seaweed? That I can paddle in the shallows with my trouser-legs rolled up but I need to be watchful about where I tread in case some of the wretched stuff ends up on my foot? Today there was lovely clear sea about ten feet beyond the shoreline, but alas, I couldn't reach it because there was an inordinate amount of fine, bright green, frondy seaweed between me and it. Not even the thick bladderwrack stuff that coats the groynes and the legs of the pier but the fine, fluffy stuff - I hate all of it. The stray bits that are carried about on the tide are the worst. They might wrap themselves around me. 

Ugh.

I have no idea where this phobia came from, but it is a phobia. My heart beats faster, I feel panicky. I can't tell if I've always been afraid of seaweed or whether there was a point at which it all went wrong. Can you? 

Was there an incident that traumatised me? I'm quite sure that my brother waved it at me when I was small, but whose brother didn't? Why would that leave me so terrified of it?  I envied the girls today as they swam and splashed and laughed and I envied their Daddy his opportunity to share the joy with them. 

I sat high up on the beach and doled out drinks and towels and collected pebbles. 

I had a dream when I was much younger. It's not exactly a recurrent dream, but one that I've had a few times with the odd modification over the years. I'm in a series of caves at the seaside. Each one has steep sides and leads into another. Each cave is about thigh deep with water, and there are three in a row, then beautiful open sea. I can see the sunshine sparkling off the waves and the sea is clear and pure and I'm longing to swim there. The only way there is through these three caves.  I step barefoot into the water in the first cave. 

It's full of fish. So full that the water is dark and heaving with them. It's dark with flashing scales and I have to force my legs through them. It's really horrid to walk through all these fish slithering against me and I keep stumbling as I tread on one and then I'm afraid because I don't want to fall over. I manage to get to the end of the cave and there's the next one. This cave is full of muddy water. It stinks. It's like a swamp. Under the surface of the mud there are who knows what kind of creatures crawling and biting and stinging, and the mud smells terrible. Mosquitoes are buzzing round and there are strange unexplained ripples that frighten me. I wade as fast as I can to the end of the cave and climb with great relief onto the rocks that divide this cave from the last. 

The last cave is the only thing that separates me from the beautiful, crystal clear ocean beyond. There are white waves breaking onto a pale sandy beach and wonderful coral formations with brightly coloured fish. It looks so inviting. 

The last cave is full of seaweed. All kinds.  Squelchy stuff, frondy stuff, mossy stuff and slimy stuff.  It's a long pool full of seawater and seaweed. 

I just can't do it. 

I managed the other caves full of slimy fish and all manner of creepy crawlies, but I can't do seaweed.  The wonders of the clean, tropical ocean beyond are not for me. I'm defeated. 

I turn back. 

Looking for a smiley pebble.

This dream stayed with me. I have no idea if it means anything (other than a demonstration of the horrors my childish imagination could come up with and the limits of my courage) but it is as clear in my head now in my forties as it was then, when I was just a child. 

I live in Derbyshire. Of all parts of the UK, Derbyshire is probably the best place to be if one has a seaweed phobia. Derbyshire is furthest inland of all counties in Britain. It's not a particularly large island, as islands go, but if you wanted to get as far as possible away from the sea, Derbyshire's the place. I don't come across seaweed that often, though at our old house we inherited a pond which regularly became overgrown with weed; my husband dealt with all that. Oh yes. Not me. If I had a phobia about open spaces, or closed-in spaces, or spiders, or trees or something it would impact my life much more and I'd have to do something about it, but seaweed?  Fairly easy to live with.  Easy to avoid.

There are echoes, sometimes. For instance, if anyone has dropped a tissue in the wet area of the changing rooms at the swimming pool, then I am anxious about going near. I would absolutely hate to tread on it. If it became fastened round my foot I would be beside myself. I hate putting my hand into washing up water with lots of floaty bits of food in it. I have to steel myself to clear out the drain in the shower if it gets clogged and have been known to throw up after doing it. 

I cannot make papier mache. Oh no. Wet bits of paper stuck to me? No thanks. 

My brave Elizabeth.

So, I hate seaweed, I live inland, but I love the sea. I love it with a passion. It recharges my batteries and I live off the experience for a long time afterwards. I have set as my aim that I will make the effort to see the sea at least once every year, because I feel especially close to you at the seaside. I gaze at the ocean and I see you. 

I see your power, your vastness, your unchanging nature. I see your majesty, your beauty, your relentlessness.  You cannot be contained. You have many faces; still, tame, calm, soothing - or fierce, thundering, awe-inspiring. I love to see the fishing boats, I love to spend time on the beach, I love to take photos. 

Swimming? No thanks. I'll watch. 

There are other reasons I don't go in the sea. The usual ones about being too self conscious in a swimsuit or even shorts. I didn't even pack any shorts for me this holiday, let alone a swimsuit. Elizabeth looked at me quizzically and asked why I wasn't coming for a swim and I didn't know what to say as I don't want to introduce the ridiculous idea that someone might be afraid of seaweed, and nor do I want to admit that I am so crippled by my body image that I couldn't bring myself to get my legs out in front of strangers. Dilemma. The moment passed. She swam and sang with joy. I paddled gingerly in the foam at the waters' edge and took photographs. 

Wel, Lord, when I started this I had no idea that I was going to get all that off my chest. My seaweed phobia is just an inbuilt part of me. I reckon that if I needed to wade through it to save one of my girls' lives, I wouldn't just stand there wistfully looking at the open water beyond; or at least I hope I wouldn't. It's just one of the many flies in the ointment of life for me. I adore the sea, but I can't go in it. 

How beautiful is that?

I don't know where I'm heading with this. I wouldn't dare to ask you for healing in case you need me to do something brave to conquer my fear. I don't want to have to be brave. I'd quite like to understand where the fear came from, but not if it requires me to face it in any dramatic way. I'd quite like to be out there laughing and swimming with my family but I can't do it so I'll let my husband have this special thing with the girls. Let it go, hey.

I didn't mean to get all maudlin. I am loving our holiday by the sea. While I've been here chatting to you it's gone dark and the sea is now an inky black invisibleness with a myriad of lights where there are ships out there. I can hear the waves on the breakwater and I can see the lighthouse winking far up the coast. Tomorrow we're off to the beach again and I'll make a good sandcastle and I'll lie on the rug and dig my toes in the sand and then go and walk carefully along the shoreline in the shallow water. I'll take lots of photos of my girls as they grow up because in the blink of an eye they won't want buckets and spades any more. I'll have to bring them for me. 

I'm going to find a pebble with a smile. Every year I find a pebble with a smile and when I get home I add eyes and a nose and I label it with the date and location of our holiday. My pebbles cheer me up all year round.

I want to make the most of this holiday. I'm needing a top-up. 

A top-up of sun, sand, sea - and you, Lord God, who made it all. 

Even the seaweed. Though I can't for the life of me understand why...