Because of a series of overwhelming challenges this past month – and truly being too mentally exhausted to write something original, I have decided to include this writing by Bernadette Noll.  The subject of ‘sea glass’ is very near and dear to my heart.  I have a tall bottle of it right full from when my sons were young and we would spend the day on the rocks in Red Beach, Maine looking for the glass.  I cherish that bottle of glass.  It brings back such sweet and precious memories every time I look at it.  The writing below says everything I would want to say if I had ever thought to write an article on ‘sea glass’.  When I read it, I address it to my Creator – praising Him for fearfully and wonderfully making me – for smoothing (refining) me but not breaking me.

‘I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass — made not weak, but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck — just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along — just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just the right luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to be in this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to realize, once again, that we have landed in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.