A Different Kind of Holiness
There was no shore in sight, only water, rising and falling without asking permission. Some waves came soft and sparkling. Others towered overhead, dark enough to steal the horizon. And yet, she stood on a surfboard, not because the sea had calmed down, but because she had learned to stand while it moved. She fell again and again. Sometimes hard, sometimes soft. Water in her lungs, sand in her knees. And every time she surfaced, she laughed. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because somehow the falling hadn’t stolen her joy—rather it increased it.
We tend to think that holiness has to look stern, jaw set, endure until heaven, but that’s not the Incarnation. God didn’t save us from creation. He entered it. Cold rivers, shared meals, wedding feasts, storms at sea. Christ steps into the water with us. And suddenly, the waves aren’t just obstacles. They’re places of encounter.
Maybe the call isn’t to demand calmer seas, but to learn to receive each wave as a place where Christ is already present. That’s eucharistic living: receiving everything as gift and returning thanks. Not because everything is pleasant, but because Christ is in it. So when we fall, and we will, maybe the question isn’t, “Why did I fall?” but, “Can I rise with gratitude, with trust, with hope, with joy?” Children already know this. They splash, tumble, laugh, delight. Not childishness, but childlike wonder. Maybe that’s closer to the Kingdom.
Perhaps joy was never meant to depend on the waves at all. There is something strangely beautiful about riding them—the rise and the fall, the exhilaration and the surrender. Without the waves, there is nothing to ride. And perhaps our hearts are much the same. Sorrow and joy are not always opposites. Sometimes, mysteriously, they arrive together. We grieve, and yet we give thanks. We ache, and yet we laugh. We fall beneath the water, only to rise with a deeper delight than before. Both are somehow gathered by Christ and offered back to us for our salvation. Perhaps we need to be saved not only from sin, but from our own imagination of what holiness is supposed to look like. We imagine clenched jaws and heavy shoulders, as though sanctity were merely enduring life until Heaven. But Christ says, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” Perhaps holiness is freer than we have imagined. Simpler. Lighter. More joyful.
A friend prayed for me today, and she saw that image: me on the surfboard, wave after wave, falling, rising, smiling. For a long time, I thought life was about just endurance. Keep going. But maybe the invitation was deeper: Don’t just survive the waves. Delight in the One who walks on them and walks with you. Because it wasn’t just me on the surfboard alone. Christ was there too—not merely to calm the waves, but to teach me that even they could become a place of communion with Him.
