Today I frolicked.
Bouncing along the beach, parading through the water, I frolicked.
Before this impulse movement, I sat on the sand, in my yoga shorts and t-shirt, reading, writing, and contemplating. I listened to instrumental music in one ear, ocean waves crashing in the other, Holy Spirit in both. I was rereading and rewriting notes I had taken over the past month, adding extra thoughts that came up as I revisited my previous scribbles.
My notes are usually compartmentalized – sermon notes, devotional insights, and worship moments in a separate notebook from where I record insights into my thought patterns and habits from the coaching I receive. I keep all these notes separated: my spiritual growth, my mind, and my schedule.
Put together, these notes encompass my lifestyle. They contain my thoughts, dreams, hopes, desires, struggles, worries, doubts, fears, and frustrations. I’ve recently updated my definition of “lifestyle” to the way I currently am living and how I spend my time thanks to John Mark Comer’s influence. My goal for the beach session was to sift through the flow of my mind from the past month’s recordings of these notes, pulling to combine them into a clearly defined lifestyle.
In other words, I combined all scribbles to see how they lended themselves toward my calling. I can fill my days with many good things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean my days are aligned with what a lifestyle shaped by calling looks like. Sometimes a full schedule hinders me from focusing on the present moment. Sometimes I focus more on the anticipation of what’s coming than on abiding in Holy Spirit. I sat on the beach writing, occasionally glancing up to see dogs, birds, and people go by. I sat, I wrote, I worshipped.
And when I was done, having focused all my energy into creating something new, my mind and body saw the waves and decided to go toward them.
I walked into the ocean, submerging my feet in the cool Atlantic. I dug my toes around the wet sand and kicked waves into themselves. It is not unusual for a fully clothed person to wade in the water, getting their feet wet. But I went deeper. One of the recurring notes I wrote focused on being present and living in the now. I had written it at least three times in this beach session, so I did what the Now-Hannah wanted to do at that moment, which was to go deeper.
I frolicked! I waded deeper and deeper until my yoga shorts were wet, hearing myself giggle as the waves grew higher. I moved in farther as the waves covered my shirt. And I frolicked through the water, jumping over the waves, skipping across the seafoam. I swam and bounced and kicked and splashed. A grown woman, fully clothed, swimming and laughing on a Thursday afternoon. A true expression of a lifestyle focused on the present moment and the presence of God.
Today I frolicked. And I’ll frolick again.
