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I love paddle boarding.  At least I thought I did. My husband maintains that I talked about it for five years.  I don’t know about that, but I did make it one of my goals for 2017: try paddle boarding.  I failed that goal.  New Year’s Day 2018 dawned on a paddle-boarder wannabe, just like every day in 2017.  So, when we started planning a quick 4-day Florida getaway for the two of us, my husband asked if I wanted to go paddle boarding. In January.  For some reason I thought this was a good idea. This is how that went.

We bought a Groupon deal. For my budget conscious husband this was a must.  It not only snares you a good deal, but if you commit with your wallet, it is also more likely to happen.  At least that’s how it works in this family. So, once he hit buy, we were in.  In Florida that week, the weather was on our side, with temperatures in the 70s, most days.  The day that we went, we wore swimsuits and t-shirts and brought clothes to change into, in case we got wet.  I was sure we would.  I was also silently chastising myself for agreeing to try this in January, even in Florida. Seriously, the whole way to the dock, I was wishing I had never thought of this.  I was convincing myself that this was not what I wanted, that I would have been happier to sleep in that day, or explore the area near our hotel to pick the perfect place for lunch.   We got to the dock and after checking in the guy took us out to the dock and went through a 10-minute tutorial on how to use the paddle boards.  I was not one to speak up, because of course, I didn’t want to come off as the uncool newbie that I was, but I was uneasy about the fact that there would be no one out there on the water with us.

Once we finished the tutorial, the guy strapped us to our boards by our ankles, handed us each a paddle and directed us to push off the dock, paddle on our knees, and then stand up carefully when we got closer to the middle of the river. We stood up carefully and managed not to land in the water, although I still can’t believe that.  But balance is a funny thing.  If you are floating on a piece of plastic in the middle of a flowing river, it can be elusive.  You must keep finding it, so you are constantly aware of it.  We paddled and balanced, decided which way to go and rebalanced, looked at the riverbanks and found our balance again. I enjoyed looking at the houses along the river and my husband was always aware of the sunbathing lizards and pointing them out to me.  But I think what was most valuable to me, what served me best, was this need to concentrate on balancing. For a woman whose mind is always wandering, always playing the what-if game, imagining scenarios, looking ahead, this enforced focusing was so good for my peace of mind. I confess I took a few minutes to ask God not to administer a lesson in humility, and then went right back to maintaining balance. Talk about being in the minute. I was in the millisecond.

But during that time on the river, I was at peace. No channel changing brain, no stories, no worrying about the kids… ok, maybe I did, but it was brief. For the time that I was on the river it was just me, keeping my balance, paddling along this river with the sun shining above and the water lapping at my board. Once we got off the river, I thought about that, how peaceful it was to just focus on what I was doing, nothing else. My husband reminded me then of the other vacations we took with our sons when we figured out that long car trips were not in the cards for our boys. They were so difficult on vacations, that at one point, my husband vowed to never take a vacation again. We did, but instead of long drives to parks, we took day trips and went white-water rafting, we tried canopy tours, we went downhill skiing.  We figured anything that put the fear of death in them would keep them from fighting as much. And it worked. Maybe not on the way there, but definitely during the action and on the way home. We figured they were too busy focusing their ADD brains, and then too tired to annoy each other afterwards.

I never thought about how good that was for me too, but it became apparent while balancing in the middle of the river, wondering if we would see alligators or manatees.

Happily, we did not get wet, except for our feet.  Which was fine.

Have you found peace in a place that you least expected would provide it?