Sometimes a song comes along and just encapsulates where you are and where you want to be. This song does just that for me. It tells you everything about where I stand right now going into 2018. In fact it is my anthem for 2018. Have a listen.
Have you ever gotten to the place where you no longer want to stand by the shore? Where having your feet planted firmly on the land is just not good enough and no longer satisfies. These past 10 months have pushed me to places I never knew I could go. They’ve forced me to look at my life, where I stand, and where I want to find myself in the future. I want to be out past the horizon, out where the waves are breaking. Knee deep I’ve been to before, but there’s more, there’s a life that can be lived beautifully in over your head. I want to go out to where I’ve never been before. See out there in the waves, in the choppiness, in the brokenness, there’s a life to be lived beyond what most ever find.
Going out there, in over our head, requires some things. Surrender of control. We like to be in control and want to order our lives such that we can manage it and the outcomes. But I’ve learned that you cannot and are not in control in life nor in love. It requires you to not be able to touch the bottom. As long as you can touch, you maintain that bit of control…you can step out, you can direct yourself, you can make something happen if needed if it gets too wild. But God is wild, life is wild, love is wild…God crashes over you out beyond the shore. Life and love crash out there too when you relinquish control. But like the song says…”I’ve lost control but I’m free.” I don’t want control in 2018….I want to just be out there, far out there, with God, living the life he has for me. “Whatever it looks like, whatever may come, I am yours.” Those things I surrender to him. I no longer know what my life is going to look like. I’ve learned that I do not know what is going to come any more. But…but I have learned….that I am his and he’s out there.
Another thing required to be beautifully in over you head is going under. When you are out there where you cannot touch, your head is going to go beneath the water. And it is going to be scary…but scary can be good. Out there life is going to hit you with life and there will be times that you go under. Times that you may sink. Times that you feel like you are never going to come up for another breath. Times where you feel like life, love, everything is dragging you down beneath the surface and you are dying. You could stay on the shore, on land, safe and secure, but your heart and your soul eventually rebel against that because it knows that it was meant for so much more.
But that place, that place out there in the depths…it is beautiful. Further and further out we can go. You can be beautifully in over your head. Strive for that this year. Don’t play it safe. Venture out beyond where you’ve been before. Go where your feet no longer feel anything solid beneath you. Love beyond what you’ve loved before. Even if you aren’t a person of faith, or don’t believe in God, search your heart and ask yourself just about life. You know this. You know that there is something more, something deeper, something more real, more alive out there. A deeper life, a life more alive, more abundant, more full. And you know that you can’t be in control to reach it. It requires a loss of control, it requires risk and vulnerability, and it requires a dying. Don’t be satisfied with the life you find before yourself as it is. Your heart knows it…there’s more. There’s a further…there’s a beyond. There is more. I want more. Whether I sink or whether I swim I just want to be beautifully in over my head from now on. You should join me. The water’s warm.
From The Whale's Belly 