I’ve thought a lot about drowning today. That final relenting to the oceans fury. That slipping beneath, gasping for air, lungs filling with water…

This present season of life has felt so very much like drowning. We fight for the shore, but the current pulls us further away. We keep struggling for air, but lungs fill with water and the light disappears. These are hard, hard days. Relentless days. Days that leave existence feeling pointless. Even in the very basic, daily battle of wills with our young ones, we are left feeling raw, and life feels so relentlessly brutal, and I feel so continuously inadequate.

And then today, I struggled helplessly against strong waves to reach my son who was being pulled out and under by the angry tide of the Jersey shore. I watched his aunt try to hold him up, and be pulled under too. I heard her calls for help and watched as his uncle tried to reach them and pull them forward…only to be dragged out again. Finally I am with them grabbing my son, trying to hold him above the surface, being dragged under…God, I am not strong enough….Then flash of red, and the lifeguard is there, pulling him to shore. To solid ground. Safety.

As I sit here, still reeling in my spirit from that feeling of powerlessness–of watching my loved ones being pulled beneath the water with no way to stop it–I know that this story could have ended very differently. And I cannot wrap my heart around that possibility. But they were there; the ones who swam over and fought when I couldn’t. And this season? This unforgiving struggle? I don’t see how it ends. I don’t see how long we keep fighting; how many more times we come up for air and get dragged back down. But I do know our story doesn’t end here. And just like I witnessed in the ocean today, we are not struggling alone. I am profoundly grateful for the people who swim over–again and again–and try to hold us above the angry waters. And so we keep swimming. We keep fighting against the pull of the sea, until the tide gives way or that flash of red appears to guide us out. And with this fresh reminder of how quickly the people we care for the most can be taken from us, with the dawning and the setting of each new day I will hold my beloveds a little tighter.