left at sea

I had really only packed winter things, and I know only un petit peu of French, but the South of France had been a dream destination for as long as I could remember. So, when I found a $30 plane ticket to Nice, I decided to roll up my pants and wear my dresses without tights, and go to what would become the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I travel a fair amount, and I’m used to being alone for a bit when I do. But usually I travel alone to meet up with others, to attend an event or a wedding, etc., not with the intent to be alone, alone. 

But this time, I felt like I needed to. It had been a long few months, three significant changes and shifts that had put three of the most major areas of my life in a bit of a free-fall. And while I’d been feeling calm and faith-filled in all three, I knew I needed some time alone to process it all. 

I saw seven of its cities & two countries. I drank approximately seventeen cappuccinos & ate my weight in croissants, but also walked an average of thirty-one  t h o u s a n d  steps per day so I feel like that equals out? French came back like a childhood memory - familiar and warm, but still hard to fully articulate. Blackberry gelato on the sand as the sun tucked itself behind the cliffs. Running every morning on the water and eating fresh fruit from a market next to the sea. Local art from a sweet old woman who had painted for her entire life. Meeting locals who sat with me while I drank wine or aforementioned cappuccinos & wrote, each of them asking something about my journal or my Bible. Laughing out loud to myself like a crazy person many times because I just couldn’t believe the beauty. Allowing myself to get gloriously lost so I could find the sweetest little backroads & hidden paths.

I realized that it is a rather good thing for me to travel alone, since I can have a strange way of doing things. I will walk anywhere that I can, even if a transport of some kind exists - it’s a preferred way to see things, and to capture it in photos and words along the way. I eat at weird times of day, I stop to photograph nearly everything, and I ask too many people for their thoughts and stories. With no one else to hurry me along, or take me off my feet and put them on a train, I actually found it rather nice. I also had no meaningful conversation with another English-speaking human for the entire length of the trip, which I didn’t realize until I saw friends in Paris on my way back, and felt the dam break and the relief of a real, English conversation. 

When I arrived in Nice, two hours of sleep in the past 24 under my belt, in a daze of exhaustion and wonder, I asked for directions to the prettiest parts of Old Nice from a friendly young woman with bright green eyes. 

With a beautiful French accent, she directed me towards the plaza - “walk straight along major road, and then left at sea.”

Left at sea - that’s quite a phrase, I thought to myself. But I tucked the thought away for later and continued on my way. 

That first day, I wandered the town and walked along the coast for several miles, not really knowing at all where I was going, but enjoying the sight of the brightest blue water too much to stop. I drank a cappuccino in the old port when a man came and promptly sat down with me. I’d been rubbing my eyes a lot because of my sleep-deprivation, and he thought I’d been crying and asked me what I was writing. I told him it was quite personal for a stranger to know, but we began to chat about other things, his childhood on the water, his career as a lawyer, my own heart for justice, and he wound up giving me recommendations for the rest of my time. 

I’ll spare you the full log of everything I did (but I will post it soon, separately, just in case you ever find yourself in a similar spot - and you SHOULD if you get the chance), but I will tell you about the jetty. 

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For my second day in the South, I did my research and planned an itinerary for two places I wanted to explore the next day - Menton and Monaco. I woke up and went for a run along the water and up a cliff, got a coffee and fruit from a market, and hopped a train to Menton, a colorful city by the sea, known for their ability to make things out of lemons - and for their pizza and color and sunshine. 

As a sidenote - I would also love to be known for my ability to make things out of lemons - and for my pizza and color and sunshine.

When I arrived, I walked down to the water and along the coast for a while, marveling at the color and the cliffs and the architecture, wondering how anything could have any business being this beautiful. 

And then I saw the jetty. Stretching out far into the blue - huge white rocks all tumbled together to form a little makeshift pier out into the sea. 

I climbed out on it as the wind whipped my hair and my dress, and I thought briefly about what I must look like to the people having lunch along the water - some wild photographer girl on a dangerous mission. When I got closer to the end, the wind was whipping faster and the waves crashed against where I was standing and I felt the sudden urge to put my camera away and begin to pray. But when I went to form the words, I began to cry, and I began instead to sing some worship song lodged in my memory about surrender, and I remembered that phrase the green-eyed French woman had said, and I realized why. 

Left at sea. 
What needs to be left here at sea? What do I need to let go of?

So I started to leave things. Insecurities by name, fears, old patterns. i started to declare things I wanted instead, pray for dreams and people and things. There was a real release I felt as I stood there - the crazy crying American girl on the white rocks in the blue-green sea. Although I know that there will be active decisions off the rocks to take on new things and form new patterns and leave old ones behind, I realized that sometimes, these kinds of things are exactly what our spirit needs. 

So for the rest of the trip, as I processed big shifts and change and new dreams, I would look at the water, usually always within sight of wherever I was at the given moment (how wild is that?) and I would toss them in. This became a practice, turning things over in my heart and hands until I was ready to let them go, and then leaving them. 

It’s hard to actually leave things we say we are going to leave. We of course are broken humans who act like broken records and revisit memories and pains and patterns that no longer serve us but made us feel better anyway. It’s a process in dire need of grace and really only possible by the strength of God.

The last bit of commentary I’ll give on this is that there are some things that cannot simply be left. Things that have formed us and inform our decisions now, the careful way we tread relationships, the jobs we do or don’t do, the places we live. Really I suppose most things have the capacity to form us if they are significant enough, but we can leave behind the lies they made us believe or the patterns they forced us into. 

There are things in the Mediterranean that I will try to leave there in the most beautiful water, clear enough that I could see the full figure and swimsuit pattern of a woman swimming from my position miles and miles a-top a cliff. Maybe that’s how it will be too, I can see them, but I cannot reach them anymore.